


Smash your hourglass

by Rainbow_Sprinkles



Series: Tend to your memories [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic elements, Everyone STILL needs therapy, Gen, Mental Illness, Non-Binary Chara, Non-Binary Frisk, Player Reader, Post-Pacifist, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychology, Uncomfortable medical situations that are kind of about sex but aren't sexual, Varying POV, We're straying into headcanon and fourth wall territory here, and lots of hugs, but hang in there it gets better, except Chara they don't want to hug you don't kid yourself, give them hugs, physical illness, starts off sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-07 21:31:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10369893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbow_Sprinkles/pseuds/Rainbow_Sprinkles
Summary: His edges are… strange. Like there is a visible aura around him. Like someone did a bad job cutting him out of whatever world he was in and haphazardly dropped him into theirs.Gaster barely needs an hour in a timeline to make a potentially revolutionary discovery.





	1. Apprehension: anxiety or fear of future misfortune or adversity.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third in this series. Read the first two installments before this one.
> 
> There are (too many) references to sex in this one, but no detailed hanky-panky. Also a few cases of nonsexual nudity and a fight scene that isn’t all that violent. I don’t think any other warnings are necessary. Nothing is particularly graphic and there isn’t sensitive content that has not already been addressed in previous installments, which is why I rated it teen. If you read the tags, you know what’s coming.
> 
> I should say that the stakes are a lot lower in this one, and for that reason it’s not as gripping as the previous installments and tensions are only briefly high. Prepare yourself for a ton of talking and character interaction, I guess? Explanations and information abound.
> 
> There are lots of domestic moments and cutesy garbage. You deserve some fluff after [Scrub the dirt from your expectations.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9663878/chapters/21830906)

Today is shaping up to be a very bad day.

This morning the city council once again votes against racial equality, including interracial marriage. Asgore and Frisk confer for a few hours and decide to give speeches directed at the monster community. They want to keep everyone’s hopes alive.

That doesn’t happen because some asshole tries to sneak a gun into the Embassy. They are caught by security and nobody is hurt. I am in the lobby first, so I take charge, and the would-be shooter immediately and loudly makes crude comments about how Sans and I must have sex. I’ve been trying to not get into insult wars with racists because Asgore convinced me that most of the time it is better if I take the high road and not engage, but it’s really fucking hard in this case. By the time human law enforcement removes them, I think this is one of those situations in which I should have let loose and verbally destroyed them and I’m mad at myself for not doing it.

Frisk and Asgore record their speeches and post them online instead. People keep telling me they are sorry about the lack of marriage law. Despite our open indifference about marriage and our eschewing of the word ‘romantic’ to describe ourselves, some people _still_ expect Sans and me to be the first to get married when the law is finally passed. And maybe we will, I don’t know, but I want it to feel like our decision, not like we were pushed into it.

When I get home, it’s late. Sans isn’t here, which means he’s getting drunk at Grillby’s.

A quick text to Grillby confirms this. I drive over to the restaurant, fish Sans off his barstool, and ignore all the looks we get as I drag him back to the car.

I don’t say a word as I buckle him in and get in the driver’s seat. He hunkers down and says, “I’m sorry. I jus’… really wanted it to pass, y’know?”

I melt a little at that. He’s talking about his feelings. That’s good. It would be hypocritical of me to get pissed at him for getting drunk when I was planning on taking opiates tonight. “I know.”

“Some people were suggestin’ we do it anyway. Show ‘em we don’t care what they think.”

“It’s illegal. We’re too close to the Royal Family to deliberately do something illegal.”

“It could be good. I dunno much ‘bout the political bullshit.”

I tighten my grip on the wheel. “Can we not talk about this right now?”

A few minutes of silence pass. Then, “After I got off the phone with you today Asgore called me and told me what that jackass was saying about us. Why didn’t I hear it from you?”

Shit. “I didn’t think any of it was worth repeating.” And I’m surprised Asgore said enough to get Sans to understand.

“Are you okay?”

“No. Frisk is okay, but I know Asriel’s not, and this is the first assassination attempt that has occurred since we got Chara, so I have no idea how they will react.”

Sans reaches over and squeezes my knee. “And next to that ya don’t need to be pickin’ my drunk ass up. Sorry, Isla.”

I try to relax. Papyrus puts Sans to bed when we get home so I can go next door.

Toriel and Asgore have been officially cohabitating since June, so it’s been three months. They are reluctant to define themselves because they don’t want to disappoint their subjects if they don’t work out. Again. I don’t know if they could manage to be friends after a second breakup, and frankly I need them to stay together. Their kids would react negatively to a breakup. They are aware of this, which is why it took them so long to move in together and why it’s taking them so long to admit out loud that they are a thing.

Asgore tells me Asriel went to bed already and no, he did not appear to be doing well. Chara is sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, headphones on and knitting needles in their hands. When I go over, Toriel rises from her chair and goes elsewhere to give us privacy.

Chara tells me they are not surprised at all because humans are shit and not passing the equality laws and intending to kill Frisk and Asgore are shitty things to do. Part of me agrees with them. Most of me sighs because they cannot have such negative expectations of other members of their race for the rest of their life. Their expectations are absolutely justified, given their experiences, but that’s no way to live.

I have them list all the humans they like in their life and what they like about them. I don’t believe I will ever break them of their habit of distrusting strangers, but I’m hoping they can move from ‘humans are bad’ to ‘bad people are bad.’

Frisk has good timing. We are finishing up when they trot downstairs. They look around and come right to me.

“Hey, Isla,” they say. Their eyes are a little wide. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Chara raises an eyebrow, but slips their headphones back on and picks up their knitting needles. Frisk and I step away. I kind of feel bad because when I considered who might need a session today, Frisk slotted in after Asriel and Chara, when it was Frisk whose life was threatened. Frisk generally has milder psychological symptoms than their adoptive siblings, but I cannot forget they might need my help, too.

As soon as we step away, they say, “I went into Asriel’s room to check on him. I think he’s sleepwalking or having a nightmare, or something, because he growled and tried to pull my soul out. Like he wanted to fight. I shut the door and came down here.”

Asriel will often sleep as soundly as anyone can, but sometimes he will flail around or sob or talk. He’s even flung a fireball at his ceiling twice without waking up.

“You were right to tell me,” I say. “Do you want to talk about what happened today?”

“No,” they reply. “I want you to check on Asriel. Something about that really put me off.”

“Okay. Tell your mom. I’ll wake him up, see what he needs.”

I do not expect to find Asriel’s bed empty when I enter his room. And I do not expect him to step out from behind the door and grab me. One of his hands goes over my mouth, claws digging into my face and jaw and neck so hard they are drawing blood, the other locks around one of my arms. I’m too shocked to move at first, so he has no problem lifting me and using my body to slam the door shut. My forehead knocks into it.

He laughs, and it doesn’t sound like him. “You think you’re sooooo smart, don’t you?” he trills. “You’re also forgetting you’re so _small_.”

He braces against the floor and _shoves_. Between him and the door, my stupidly fragile body doesn’t stand a chance. My head is turned to the side and he’s putting painful amounts of pressure on my neck with his shoulder.

It takes a few seconds to process this. To accept it. I quickly come to the conclusion that when Asriel comes back to himself, he would rather I fight. He wouldn’t want me to take it, even if it means hurting him to get him off me.

He’s fourteen and five-eight. Every year he gets bigger and taller. He’s still crushing me to the door, my feet off the floor and most of my weight held up by my neck. I’m starting to feel woozy. I brace myself with my left leg, push back into him, and swing my right foot backward.

My heel catches him in the crotch. I can’t get a lot of force behind the kick, but it’s enough. He flinches and his grip loosens and I slide down the door. When I’m on my feet I throw the elbow of my free arm back. It collides with the softness of his belly.

He steps back, releasing me completely, hisses, “ _Bitch_ ,” and one of his hands flashes out. The cotton of my shirt is a non-factor and there are bloody gouges across my left shoulder blade.

I spin around, one hand searching for the doorknob, the other in front of me. “Asriel, you need to—”

“Don’t _call_ me that!” he snarls. I realize what is happening and I open my mouth to say more, but he seizes me by the throat and tries to drag me forward and I’m using knees and fists, but he uses his greater arm span to tilt me away from him and grabs onto one of my arms.

He slowly bends my elbow. In the wrong direction. “Flowey,” I choke out. “Flowey, stop—”

He laughs again – that high-pitched _hee hee hee_ – and I’m having a hard time tempering my instinct to beat him down to the floor, to not stop until he quits moving, but I can’t let him snap my limbs and strangle me, there has to be something in the middle I can do, maybe if I pin him I can actually talk to him—

There is a knock on the door, a voice. Asriel’s head turns, and I twist my arm and shove my shoulder into his ribs.

We’re falling as the door opens. Asriel snarls and growls and lands on his back and I slam the heel of my hand into the middle of his chest and backhand him across the face. His hands move, his claws leave burning trails down my right arm and his other hand latches onto my left hip, which he uses to leverage me sideways, cracking my head and shoulder against the nearby wall and _damnit_ his claws hurt. I might as well be naked, for all the protection my clothes aren’t providing me.

I have to hand it to Asgore. Instead of knocking me off his son, he grabs Asriel’s arms and pins them to the floor. I slap the young monster again, and when that doesn’t snap him out of it, I grab both his horns and bash his head into the floor, hoping desperately this puts him out for a while.

Intent is everything, so it works. He goes limp. Intent was why none of my blows did anything earlier. I was not focused and I didn’t want to hurt him.

“How…” I pant. “Why did you help me?”

Asgore looks upset, obviously, but under that his eyebrows raise incredulously. “Look at yourself, Isla. It was clear you were only defending yourself.”

It is now I feel my blood complying with gravity and rolling down my body. Down my face, both arms, back, one leg, my stomach – he got me more often than I realized.

I stand slowly. Moving suddenly will fling blood everywhere. My sweatpants are falling down because he clawed through the elastic on my left hip and – damnit, he got my underwear, too.

“Call Alphys,” I tell Asgore. “W-we should get a look at his soul. He thought he was Flowey.”

“He thought he was Flowey?” Asgore repeats, horrified. “What does… what does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” At best, he was still asleep and having a very potent nightmare. At worst, he has dissociative identity disorder. “Can you restrain him and call Alphys? I really n-need to stop the bleeding.”

“Of course. Please, take care of yourself.”

I don’t get very far. Frisk sees me on my way to the bathroom and stares, mouth hanging open. Then Chara climbs the stairs, turns the corner, and sees me.

They regain their composure the quickest. “Mom!” they yell. “Come up here!”

They usher me into the bathroom. Toriel’s jaw drops when she sees me, too. I stutter through an explanation. I am absolutely dreading Asriel waking up. On top of whatever made him attack me, he’s going to feel so guilty for the act itself.

Toriel applies healing magic, which helps enormously, but does not totally heal the majority of my wounds. Asriel’s claws are usually blunt, but he used his natural strength to overcome that. I did not believe he was capable of doing this much damage. I have bruises all over the place, but I bruise easily so that doesn’t mean much.

Chara tells Toriel to go help Asgore. She wants to check on Asriel, even though he will still be out cold, so she goes after asking if I’m going to be alright. I’m not, but I lie to her.

Chara sends Frisk to get gauze and rubbing alcohol and paper tape. They argue with me for thirty seconds before I realize if they want to be here and take care of me, I should let them. I strip and turn the shower on. I turn the water pressure down until it’s little more than a trickle, turn down the temperature, and rinse the blood away.

When I’m done, I’m still bleeding a little in places, but it has mostly stopped. Frisk comes back and I suppose it doesn’t matter if they see me naked, too. I’m not body-shy and neither of them seems to be uncomfortable, so whatever.

Chara and I pass the rubbing alcohol back and forth as we clean the lacerations. They do my back, shoulders, and arms, which would be difficult for me to do on my own. We layer gauze over them and tape it down. I won’t need to wear it for long; a couple days of eating magical food and I should be good.

I probably shouldn’t go to work tomorrow, though. My sister is the only person at the Embassy who would ask, but I can see human journalists making a big deal about my injuries. I’m sure the racists would suggest Sans is abusing me, which would be laughable, since I could kill him if I wanted to and I doubt the opposite is true.

Frisk is worried. Chara nonchalantly says, “If something were wrong with Asriel’s soul, he would have turned back into a flower or melted like the amalgamates,” but I think they’re a little worried, too.

I want to go home and sleep, but I wait. Frisk gets me a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Both of these things are too big for me, but mine are shredded and bloodstained and I can’t walk around naked. Right after I get dressed, Alphys shows up with a portable soul scanner. She brings Undyne, which is a good idea, but unnecessary, because Asriel has already woken up and is crying so hard he can barely breathe.

I take one look at him and turn to Frisk. “Call Kalene,” I say. “If she doesn’t pick up, text her. Let her know we’re going to need her, even if she doesn’t get here until tomorrow.” Kalene is usually better at calming Asriel down in the short-term than I am. These symptoms are new to everyone, but she’s probably still his best bet.

There is no talking to him right now. He wants to see what he did to me, but he doesn’t need that guilt and three kids seeing me naked in the span of fifteen minutes seems like too much. I sit on the bed and he lays his head in my lap and cries onto my thigh and clutches at me. Alphys tells me the scan is normal, which is what I expected.

I am too exhausted to provide therapy right now, which is fine, because it’s too soon. I automatically tell him it wasn’t his fault when he chokes out apologies.

He’s worried he’ll hurt somebody if he goes back to sleep, so he doesn’t want to sleep. I remind him that sleep deprivation makes practically every other psychological symptom worse. Undyne volunteers to stay up and check on him as he sleeps, which is nice of her. She assures him she’ll kick his ass if he wakes up and becomes violent again. He doesn’t want to burden anyone, but he accepts this.

I explain to Toriel and Asgore that I will have to evaluate Asriel for dissociative identity disorder. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has it, given his time as Flowey, but if he does I would have expected to notice it sooner.

I tell them what it is and not much else because I don’t want to terrify them. Psychologists and psychiatrists have gotten better at treating most mental illnesses, especially now that most people believe preventative care is just as important to good mental health as it is to good physical health. There are tons of studies and scientific evidence that have helped improve treatment techniques. DID gets left out every time. The prognosis is poor, there is usually comorbidity with other mental disorders, and there is no agreed-upon treatment plan. There isn’t a good way to study it.

When the conversation is over, I talk to Asriel again, which is to say I hug him and promise we will talk tomorrow. He’s still crying, but it’s calmer now. I stroke his head until he falls asleep, then I go downstairs to warn Undyne that he sometimes talks and moves and flings fireballs in his sleep. Alphys has decided to stay with her and is already curled up on the sectional under a blanket.

I leave to Toriel telling Chara and Frisk they need to go to bed. Neither is happy with this, but they both listen.

My house is quiet and dark. Papyrus and Sans are already asleep. It is past midnight. My contacts are burning my eyes, so I take them out in the upstairs bathroom. I put on my glasses, take stock of the gauze visible on my arm and the scabs on my face. Now that I’m looking at myself, I can see the barest discoloration around my neck that was probably a bad bruise before Toriel healed me.

Bean’s food dish is full. I fed him when I got home with Sans. He should have eaten a little by now, but he hasn’t touched it.

Actually, cuddling Bean always makes me feel better. He’s so good about tolerating me when I’m stressed or my symptoms get icky. I open the door and step onto the balcony. “Bean?” I call softly.

I go downstairs and begin looking because Bean is twenty-two and has gotten progressively hard of hearing over the past three years. I continue to call – even if he can’t hear his name, just hearing my voice should bring him to me.

I find him in the kitchen. Under the table. And it’s clear why he didn’t eat or come when I called.

I’m not surprised. He made it to twenty-two. That’s _really_ old for a cat. I’ve been acknowledging this possibility for five years.

He’s stiff, on his side, legs stuck straight out, neck extended, eyes half-open. I wet a dishtowel before crouching down. I lift up one back leg – yep, he peed a little. I wipe his fur down. He didn’t poop.

I had something in mind to do next. Maybe I was going to move him, but my brain blanks out and my vision’s blurry and between everything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours I can’t hold it together, and maybe I grab a bottle of vodka before I crawl under the table and curl my body around Bean’s.

Yeah. Worst day ever.

 

* * *

 

Papyrus is the one who finds me.

His surprised exclamation wakes me up. I open my eyes and the light shining in through the windows stabs into my brain through my pupils. I close my eyes again, trying to relax my face because my head hurts and grimacing made it throb.

He crouches down. “Isla?” he asks, and even though he is speaking at normal volume it’s still too loud and it throws gasoline on the fire that is licking the inside of my skull. “What are you doing under the table?”

“Shh,” I say. I lay my head back down.

He says something else that I ignore, and finally. Silence.

I’m almost asleep again when there is another voice: “Oh, shit.”

Sans crawls under the table with me. I feel him begin to stroke my hair. “Hey. Wanna tell me what—”

His hand stills. “Isla.” Tone sharp. “Who the fuck did this to you?”

His hand ghosts down the gauze layered on my right arm. That’s a reminder. No equality laws, another would-be assassin, Asriel’s new, terrifying symptoms, and my dead cat.

I turn my face into Bean’s grey fur and start to cry. It makes my headache worse. There is a _clink_ of bone on glass – Sans passing the vodka bottle to Papyrus, probably. I’m still wearing the clothes Frisk got me. I’m thirty and I’m a psychologist and even though I’ve been mentally preparing myself for years, I still fell apart because my kitty died. I still got drunk and slept under the table in a sixteen-year-old’s clothes.

Sans finds a rhythm stroking my head and back. He shushes me and has a murmured conversation with Papyrus. I need to stop. I’m just getting Bean’s fur wet. He hated getting his fur wet. He hated it when I cried and he knew cuddling made me feel better so he would always cuddle with me. Granted, that was because I trained him, but he liked it too, because he always purred if he was in physical contact with someone he liked.

“Isla, we gotta move you,” Sans finally says. “Can you move on your own?”

I try, and as soon as I shift, pain lances up my back and into my right hip. My spine cracks no fewer than four times. My joints are typically very crackly when I first wake up (and it’s only gotten worse as I get older), but that hardly even counted as a movement.

I check my arms, then legs. Everything is stiff and swollen. The fingers of my right hand are puffed up like sausages. My left hand is okay, but of course the afflicted hand would be my dominant one. My knees and elbows are itchy, too.

I shake my head. “Okay,” Sans says. “I’m gonna have Papyrus put you on the couch.”

“I have to pee,” I whisper. I think I’m lucky I didn’t pee myself in my alcohol-induced sleep.

“The bathroom, then. Paps?”

My eyes are still closed, but I can sense Sans move away from me. “Is quick better?” Papyrus asks quietly a moment later. “Or should I move you slowly?”

I feel my eyes fill with tears. Damnit, damnit, I’m not going to do this again. “I – don’t know.”

“I’m going to take Bean from you now.”

He’s still speaking too quietly and yep, I’m crying again, but I let Bean go. Three seconds later Papyrus slides one hand under my right hip and his forearm under my thigh, his other hand and arm supports my shoulder and back, and he lifts.

I actually gasp when he moves me and my weight shifts. My joints crackle half a dozen more times, my right hip and knee lock up, and it feels like white-hot knives are being shoved into my spine. I haven’t had pain this bad in a long time, but I set myself up by sleeping on the floor.

Sans can carry me without magic, but it isn’t easy for him. Papyrus can manage it without issue, so he quickly takes me into the bathroom. He turns my body and puts my feet on the floor slowly and I grit my teeth the whole time. Sans takes his place in supporting my weight. Papyrus leaves so his brother can help me pee. This is only the second time Sans has assisted me in this manner, despite my teenage years being full of urinary catheters and nurses and aides or my mom helping me on the toilet or in the shower. I am the heathiest I have been in eighteen years, thanks in no small part to Asriel.

Asriel, who is probably awake by now and probably needs me. “My phone,” I rasp out. “I need my phone.”

“One thing atta time,” Sans says. My arthritis tends to get better the more I move, even though moving hurts like a bitch at first. When I’m done, he helps me limp to the sink to wash my hands. I’m completely unwilling to try the stairs, so Papyrus carries me upstairs and Sans helps me change out of Frisk’s clothes.

“Where’s Bean?” I whisper when he gets me in bed.

“He’s on the table,” Sans replies. “I made a towel-nest for him.” He hands me my phone. “I’m sorry, Isla.”

My eyes are streaming again. “I knew it was coming.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.”

Damnit. Missed calls and texts from Asgore, Alphys, Frisk, and Chara. Asriel must feel like he can’t contact me.

Sans waits a few seconds. “You gonna tell me what happened now?”

He saw the rest of the gauze when he helped me change clothes. “I went next door after you went to bed,” I say. I swallow. “Asriel lost it. Thought he was Flowey and attacked me.”

Air whistles out from between his teeth. “I don’t know if you’re up to dealing with that today.”

“H-he woke up. He was devastated he’d hurt me. I don’t know if I can let him sit on this. I at l-least want to talk to Toriel and Asgore, get an idea of what’s going on.”

“And let them know what happened over here.”

“Yeah.”

Papyrus calls off work and makes me breakfast. I take my meds, including my analgesics and steroids. Sans sits with me most of the day, occasionally helping me try to move so I don’t stiffen up so badly again.

Asgore comes by first, alone, and maybe I spend a few minutes crying into his shoulder, and maybe he cries a little too. He tells me his son didn’t sleep well. Asriel wants to see me but is worried he will injure me again.

I call Asriel’s phone and we decide together he can come over. Sans is antsy, but he knows better than to protest.

Toriel brings all three of her kids over. She homeschools Chara in the evenings and it was obvious Asriel wasn’t going to school today, but she decided she and Frisk would skip, too.

Asriel cries, as expected. Chara does too, which is unexpected. Asriel and Frisk both crawl into bed with me and Chara sits on Asgore’s lap, encircled by big furry arms.

We take a nap and by the time we wake up my joints are better. My brain still feels like it’s been through a blender, but Asriel is the calmest he has been so now is the time to evaluate him.

Sans tells me Papyrus went across the street to update Undyne and Alphys. Toriel takes over our kitchen to make dinner and makes Sans help her. Asgore is keeping an eye on Chara, who is sitting at the table, hand repeatedly stroking over Bean even though I can’t see him inside his towel-nest.

Asriel readily admits he remembers the entire ordeal. He remembers choking me, scratching me, mocking me. He did not feel like he was not in control of his body. He did feel like he was soulless – love, hope, and compassion felt out of his reach.

He was angry, but that is nothing new. I think he will have anger issues for the duration of puberty, while his body and soul are focused on growing and not so focused on consistently regulating his emotions.

The lack of memory impairment is good. That means it most likely isn’t a separate personality. It sounds like it was more of an altered emotional state brought on by the stress of equality laws getting shot down and the would-be assassination attempt. Flowey wasn’t really Asriel, but he was something Asriel became to survive his soullessness.

He is still terrified it could happen again. I could always calm him down at least a little by promising I could handle it, but he doesn’t believe me fully anymore. He has always trusted that I could handle anything. That I could protect him from anything, even himself.

Now he doesn’t and it’s new and it’s probably just my emotional exhaustion, but I absolutely hate it. I want him to be little again. I want to be able to calm him down just by being in his presence. I want him to believe whatever comes out of my mouth, especially when I tell him I will make everything okay.

I thought I was used to my kids growing up, but I’m not sure about that anymore.

 

* * *

 

Sans stays home with me for the next few days. It’s mostly so he can be here in case Asriel loses it again, because Asriel isn’t going back to school until I tell Toriel he can. Sans has gotten on my case many times about overworking myself, even before we were together – but he knows he can’t push it with these kids. He will let me make myself sick over them. He knows all he can do is take care of me when I’m done taking care of them.

Asriel actually bounces back fairly quickly – of the kids, he becomes the most emotionally dependent on me when his symptoms get bad and he requires the most reassurance. Of course, there are a lot of unknowns in play. It’s hard to make definitive conclusions about anything with only one instance as a sample size.

We have to go with a ‘wait and see’ attitude. He admits he was stressed out about the equality laws going to vote, which was not something he mentioned to me. I see him two or three times a week in this manner, so he had ample opportunity. He does better when he tells me everything bothering him, even trivial, small things, so he promises to try to do a better job with that, even though he still cannot talk about what Flowey is to him. It’s frustrating because he _needs_ to talk about Flowey, but I can’t push him. I have to be patient.

As I am treating him, people are in and out of the house, including Kalene, who definitely contributes to how quickly Asriel recovers. Everyone’s checking up on me, too. I’m… okay. It was the timing that got me, coming home to a dead cat on top of everything else.

Undyne manages to give me a hug gentle enough it doesn’t pop my ribs or spine, though. That probably won’t happen again in literal years.

I don’t know what to do with Bean’s ashes. Cremation has become more popular in this country over the last century, especially as religion got less popular and people realized cemeteries were a waste of otherwise usable land. There isn’t really a standard as to what to do with the ashes of a loved one. Some people specify in their wills where they want their ashes to be spread, but others stay in urns. Monsters will spread a deceased loved one’s dust on things that person loved, which is a nice sentiment.

I decide to let him be, for now. I can make the decision when my head is in a better place.

Sans goes back to work. This summer he got a job doing research with one of the professors at the college. He still works with Alphys at the lab a few days a week, but he’s more into physics than he is soul science. He has almost quit doing unskilled, odd-end jobs because he finally likes what he’s doing and he’s finally beginning to consistently believe the future is something he can expect to happen.

Next Friday, I give Asriel the green light to go back to school. I call Papyrus and tell him he should hang out with Undyne or Mettaton or my sister for a while. When Sans gets home, we have sex _twice_ , which never happens, but I suppose we haven’t really touched each other in almost three months so it was overdue.

We’re basking in the afterglow when a noise starts up. It’s low, rumbly, and loud enough to permeate the whole house but not loud enough to disturb our neighbors. It sounds like some kind of alarm.

When Sans hears it, he shoots up out of bed and, completely naked, sprints out of our room.

I follow him, but I stop in the bathroom first to clean up and get dressed. Whatever it is, I’m not dealing with it without clothes.

When I’m done, I follow the noise into the basement.


	2. Time: the indefinite, continued, measurable progress of existence and events from the past, through the present, and to the future.

Sans usually keeps his room in the basement locked up. I assumed it was some kind of skeleton-cave when I moved in, but he isn’t down there often. It is where he keeps some kind of large, sheet-covered machine and notes written in gibberish. I’ve been in his room a few times with him, but he has always been evasive when I asked him questions about either of those things. I let it drop because the machine has stayed broken and I figured it was important to allow him his own space. He hasn’t been down here in months, as far as I know.

The washer and dryer are at the bottom of the stairs. I hook a left to see the door to Sans’s room wide open. He’s staring at a monitor that looks like it belongs in last century. It doesn’t have a touch screen or gaze tracking and depending on where you stand in relation to it, the display varies from clear to dark. I don’t recognize the program he has pulled up.

“Sans,” I say.

He ignores me and types furiously on the keyboard. The monitor is hooked up to the machine, if the wires are any indication. Within a few seconds the noise stops. Text scrolls upwards on the monitor, too fast to read, then it goes dark.

“Damnit!” Sans bashes a fist on the table in front of him. He shoves a hand downward, along his leg, realizes he’s naked and therefore doesn’t have his phone on him, and sprints past me to go back upstairs.

I follow him to our bedroom. I’ve never seen him move so fast without teleporting. While he gets dressed, I pick out a couple of knives. I need to be prepared, and his behavior is telling me this is the best way to be prepared.

He’s holding his phone to the side of his head. He curses, pauses, then says, “Alph, it’s me. Your alarms for the Underground lab going off?” A pause. He jams his feet into his slippers. “Don’t ask how I know,” he says sharply, an almost threatening edge to his voice. “I’ll turn them off. No, stay put, I’ll handle it. I’m fuckin’ serious, Alph, don’t you dare go down there. Don’t let anyone follow me. I need you to listen to me here. If you don’t, you could make everything worse. I’ll explain when I get back, alright?”

When he hangs up, I’m in front of him. “I’m going with you.” It was shitty of him to talk to Alphys like that. If I find out it wasn’t justified, I’m reaming him for it later.

“No, you’re not. Go take care of the kids. If I don’t come back, they’re our best bet.”

“Wrong thing to say, Sans. I’m human. You’re fragile, even for a monster. I’ll do whatever you say, but I want to be your defense.”

He’s not smiling. “Isla, this could be dangerous in ways we don’t even have words to explain.”

“Would you let me do something like that on my own?” I retort.

He grimaces and lets out a sigh. “No.”

“I _am_ coming with you.”

He doesn’t seem to want to waste time. “Fine. But you gotta do whatever I say.”

I nod. He knows what’s going on, and I trust him. “Fine.”

He takes my hand and we teleport. Since the move to the surface, Sans has gotten better at teleporting with passengers and covering the distance from our house to the Underground. I’ve gotten used to teleporting, too, so doing so is only hard on my body if Sans has to cover a large distance or if he’s unfocused and doing a crappy job.

Neither applies presently. He puts us in Hotland, right outside of Alphys’s old lab.

Most places and things in the Underground have been maintained. Some monsters have never been to the surface and will probably die having never seen the surface. Some live here and will travel to the surface. Some live on the surface and travel here. Some have homes both on the surface and in the Underground. Toriel and Asgore made sure every monster knew the surface was accessible to them, but ultimately, it is each individual’s choice where to live, where to work, and where to visit.

Practically all monsters who stayed here live in New Home. The Underground is open to human tour groups, too – a lot of the monsters who stayed run Mettaton’s hotel so the tour groups can have a place to eat or sleep, if it’s an overnight tour. I don’t know if any humans live down here. I think Asgore would have mentioned it to me if that ever came up.

When the tours started, Alphys locked up the lab and apparently set up alarms so she would know if someone managed to get in. Sans casually blasts in the door. Nothing is on except low-power lights, which cast a creepy red glow over everything.

He heads directly to the ancient computer. It’s the only thing still on the desk and the desk is pretty much the only thing in this room. Alphys probably left it in order to control the lighting.

Sans is never this tense. It’s kind of freaky. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?” I ask.

He punches something in on the keyboard and turns around. “I’m not entirely sure,” he admits. “I think the timeline could be in danger.”

“The kids were the only ones who could manipulate the timeline,” I say. “They have all said they don’t feel like they could do it anymore.”

He shoves his hands in his hoodie pockets. “They weren’t the only ones. Tori told me she thinks all the other fallen humans might have been able to do it too. I haven’t been able to work up the guts to ask Asgore if he knows for sure. And besides that…”

He rubs his skull. The real lights are slowly beginning to come on. “If you see a skeleton,” he says, “tall like Papyrus, skinny, don’t hold back. He was the Royal Scientist before Alphys, but something went wrong. He’d been trying to manipulate the timeline, and in a way, he succeeded. He manipulated his own existence out of the timeline. Basically erased himself.”

This is not computing well with my brain. “Then why do you think he’s here?”

“When he erased himself, he also erased everyone’s memories of him. But not totally. It’s like the resets, the different timelines, some people can remember even though they’re not real memories. I’ve told you about this, it usually feels like trying and failing to remember a dream, you know _something’s_ there, just out of your reach, but…”

The lights come on and he turns back to the monitor, typing furiously again. “My memories became a lot clearer once that alarm went off. He’s in this timeline, right now, and he’s not supposed to be. I don’t know why or what he wants or how it might screw up time and space. Damnit, Alphys doesn’t have cameras down there anymore. We’re just going to have to look.”

He turns, grabs my wrist, and tows me to a door that opens to an elevator. “Should we try to talk to him first?” I ask. “And what is this person’s name?”

“His name’s Gaster. Let me do the talking.”

 

* * *

 

It’s both sudden and gradual, but when Frisk realizes what it is they raise their head, staring at Asriel across the table.

“What?” Asriel asks without looking up from his math.

Frisk keeps staring. He obviously hasn’t had the same revelation they had. “Nothing,” they lie. They stand and make their way into the living room, where Toriel is working with Chara.

“Greetings, Frisk,” their mother says. “Are you finished with your homework?”

“Not – quite,” they manage. Chara looks up and raises an eyebrow. They know something is wrong, but based on their expression, they don’t know what.

“I’m going to take a break,” Frisk says. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Toriel nods. “Thank you for letting me know. I plan on beginning dinner in half an hour.”

That meant, “You’re sixteen and you can manage your own time but you’d better be done with your homework before dinner.”

They speed-walk away before Chara can question them. They don’t want to disappoint their mom, but if they are right about this she would agree checking in is more important than homework.

They go upstairs so they have privacy and call Sans. His phone doesn’t even ring. It goes straight to voicemail.

Isla next. She’ll know where Sans is. Or at least she’ll know where he’s supposed to be.

When her phone does the same thing, their anxiety increases tenfold. Who else might know what’s going on? Papyrus won’t; Sans will have made sure of that. He has always liked to shelter Papyrus.

They call Alphys. They half-expect her phone to go right to voicemail, too, but she picks up. “H-hi, Frisk.”

They know she hates talking on the phone, but texting would take too long. They decide to get to the point. “Alphys, do you know where Sans is?”

She waits a beat too long, then she squeaks out, “No.”

“His phone went right to voicemail,” Frisk continues in a rush. “So did Isla’s. I just… something’s up with the timeline, I just _remembered_ some things out of nowhere and I don’t really know what any of it means and I was hoping Sans could help me figure it out. Have you spoken with him?”

Alphys is a crappy liar. “Um,” she says. “W-w-well… yes, but… he told me not t-to say anything.”

They feel simultaneously relieved and worried. “Please? I want to help him.”

“H-he… really didn’t want any help, Frisk. He w-was adamant on handling it h-h-himself.”

Their heart sinks. “Can I do anything to help? Are you doing anything? I don’t want to just sit here…”

“I know, I d-don’t either, but…” There is a pause. “I’ll t-tell you what. Come outside and w-we’ll go to the lab. See if we can figure anything out.”

“Just me?”

She thinks. “N-no. Bring your siblings. Er… ask your mom if you can all c-come. I don’t know w-what to tell you to t-t-tell her?”

“I’ll think of something,” Frisk decides. This is better than sitting around doing nothing, and once they see Alphys in-person she might be more likely to tell them where Sans is. “Give me five minutes.”

 

* * *

 

They find him in the room with the DT extractor.

He is just as Sans remembers him. As tall as Papyrus, dressed in black and white, bent over some piece of machinery or another, distracted, mumbling to himself—

Something is off. Sans does not know why he expected Gaster to look… melty. Sort of like the amalgamates. He doesn’t, but why did Sans expect that, why does he remember…

His edges are… strange. Like there is a visible aura around him. Like someone did a bad job cutting him out of whatever world he was in and haphazardly dropped him into theirs.

Sans goes to speak, but Gaster looks up and the words die.

He looks surprised. “Sans. I did not expect to see you – is that a human?”

Even if he’s frozen, Isla’s not, and she unsheathes one of her knives.

Gaster notices and opens his hands to show they are empty. “Your weapon is clean, human. You have no EXP.”

“You can only get EXP by killing monsters,” Isla responds. “It says nothing about how many humans I’ve killed.”

Which is only one, not that Gaster knows that. He barely acknowledges it. “At any rate, you are too old.”

“Too old?” she repeats. “Explain yourself and nobody has to get hurt.”

He nods. “The room I was supposed to appear in is usually full of fog, but it is clear. I suppose I have made a temporal error.”

Wait… was he…?

Gaster is still looking at Isla. “With so many timelines it can be easy to forget how far along one is, so I do occasionally make mistakes. I do not always make it to the places in which I am to appear. In fact, I would be inclined to guess I am usually not in the places in which I occasionally appear. It is difficult for me to access specific timelines.” A pause. “That said, are you the human who broke the barrier? Long ago in this timeline, perhaps? Well, there is one way to find out.”

Sans feels the magic. Gaster pulls Isla’s soul out.

All at once, she’s readying herself for an attack and he’s shaking his head. “It would appear you are not,” he says. “Their soul is red, not light blue—”

And Sans sends a wave of bones at him, magic cresting in his body, focused only on defending his partner. Gaster teleports out of the way. He looks vaguely startled, and he opens his mouth to say something, but he hasn’t let go of Isla’s soul and Sans readies Gaster’s own signature attack – the Gaster Blasters – to use against him and he lets go.

Why did he have to come back now? Everything was going… not perfectly, but well. Frisk and Asriel and Chara don’t feel like they can reset and the third who was with Frisk and Chara is gone and it’s fucking ironic, isn’t it, that Gaster ignored Sans and Papyrus when they were younger and he can remember wanting the Royal Scientist’s attention and, in turn, paying as much attention as he could to Papyrus because he decided he would be the best big brother ever and he’d never let Papyrus feel wanting for attention or love or _anything_. And then it happened and Gaster was gone and nobody remembered him and Sans’s own memories felt fuzzy and wrong and he looked and looked and _looked_ for a way to go back and nothing ever worked and then he was distracted by the surface, by integration, by Isla, and as soon as he doesn’t want Gaster’s attention anymore, as soon as he starts to think he might not need closure after all, Gaster’s back.

He’s back and he has pulled out his partner’s _soul_. At least Isla understands. Once Gaster teleports again, she throws one of her knives at him. He ducks out of the way and Sans has to lay off because Isla charges him. He doesn’t want to accidentally hit her.

“Wait,” Gaster says. Instead of dodging, his hand curls around Isla’s when she tries to drive her fist into his ribs. Using her existing momentum, she hunches and throws her shoulder into him. He staggers back, but is ultimately able to take the force of her push without falling over.

She tries to hack at the hand holding her fist. This prompts Gaster to grab her other wrist. He squeezes so hard she drops her knife and snarls. “Stop,” he demands. He is trying to look at Sans, but he seems unwilling to look away from Isla for even a moment. “Sans, stop this—”

He is already summoning more Blasters. Gaster sees, so he turns Isla, effectively using her as a shield. One of his hands raises to curl around her throat, but she throws her head back into his chest and does something with her feet and then Gaster falls and she does too.

Then he’s gone. Isla scrambles back to her feet. Sans turns sharply and yep, the old scientist is behind him. “Sans,” Gaster tries, but he sees his partner rubbing her wrist in his peripheral vision, and he lets the Blasters fire.

This time Gaster retaliates with his own. Behind that, there is a wave of bone attacks – blue alternating with white. He’s where Sans got that idea. He is where Sans got a lot of ideas, actually.

Bone colliding with bone is loud, but Sans cannot afford to be hit, and he doesn’t think Gaster can afford to be hit, either. Whatever is tying him here, to this reality, to this timeline, it’s… not the same as what keeps everyone else here. It’s weaker, temporary, or something.

And if hitting him will send him back to where he is supposed to be, that is what Sans will do. He can’t let anything risk this timeline, he can’t. After coming this far… he wouldn’t be able to do it all over again. He wouldn’t.

Sans realizes too late he is aiming at empty air. He doesn’t even get the chance to turn around, or to look for the old bastard. Something hits him and he’s out.

 

* * *

 

Chara waits for Frisk to go into the scanner. They lean closer to Asriel and ask, “Does Frisk seem a little off to you?”

“They do seem kinda tense,” Asriel agrees quietly.

Chara glances at Alphys. Frisk isn’t the only one who seems kind of tense. She’s been sweating and stuttering like crazy since they got here. More than usual, anyway.

“I confess I do not understand why Frisk and Chara had to come,” Toriel says to Alphys, “if this serves as a checkup for Asriel.”

“W-w-well I f-figured I’d g-grab their readings if I w-w-was g-going to t-t-turn the scanner on!” Alphys replies. It comes out as a fake-chipper, panicked chirp. “M-more data can n-n-never hurt!!”

“I suppose so,” Toriel says.

When Frisk is done, they stand next to Alphys, who says, “Okay, Chara!! Your t-t-turn!!”

Chara goes in, but they dither by the door so they can see out the little window set in it. Their gaze focuses on Asriel, nervously chewing his lower lip and twisting his hands. Asriel, who grows taller and gets bigger every year. His horns are almost as long as Toriel’s now.

Sometimes Chara looks at Asriel and Frisk and hates how much bigger they are. How much older they are, even though it’s only a few years. Sometimes they feel relieved, because the bigger Asriel gets, the older Frisk gets, the more likely they will be able to protect themselves. If they have to.

When Chara is done, Alphys changes the settings from human to monster. Sans told Chara the technological upgrade so the scanners could read monster souls was recent. They wonder if they could do hands-on things in a lab like he does. It would be preferable to a profession in which they’d be required to interact with people all day.

Asriel inhales deeply and walks into the scanner. Even though Frisk and Alphys are acting fucking weird and suspicious, Chara lets themself be distracted for a moment by this. They have to wonder what Asriel was letting build up inside him, for him to – to insist he was Flowey. To refuse to answer to Asriel.

It has to be something big and big things don’t just go away. It’s still there. They and Frisk have taken turns gently trying to talk him into revealing what’s wrong, but Chara isn’t sure _he_ knows what’s wrong. If he knew, he would have told Isla by now and he wouldn’t have clawed the shit out of her. Right? He has violent thoughts and impulses sometimes, he has told Chara about that because in that they are the same.

Chara notices Frisk murmuring to Alphys, too quietly for Toriel or Chara to hear them. Their eyes narrow to slits. What the hell is going on with those two? Do they know something the rest of them don’t?

“Hey, Alphys,” Chara calls, taking a step or two closer. Her behavior will be more telling than Frisk’s. “Did Isla want you to scan Asriel’s soul?”

She whips around, eyes wide. She is far too nervous and jumpy at such a trivial question. “What!?”

Chara stares at her for a moment. “Isla made me get my brightness checked every week for a few months when I started therapy. I was wondering if she wanted Asriel to have regular checkups, too.”

Alphys waits just a beat too long to answer. “Yes!!! U-uh, she did!! This is f-for her!!”

Chara smiles. They are aware it is not a nice smile. It is more for Frisk than Alphys. To let Frisk know Chara understands everything is not right. “Then why don’t you contact her, give her the results?”

“That’s unnecessary,” Frisk interjects. “It might be necessary if something were wrong, but nothing’s wrong, so there’s no need to bother her.”

Asriel checks his phone. “She must be busy,” he says quietly. “She hasn’t texted me to tell me when she wants to meet today.”

That is unusual. Isla always contacts them the day she expects to have sessions with them. Right now, Asriel is having them almost every day. Chara has them three or four times a week, but lately it has been more like once or twice because Isla has been busy with Asriel and it kind of hurts to go over there and not have Bean sit on their lap while they have a session.

Toriel rests a hand on Asriel’s shoulder. “Let’s go home,” she says gently. “We can finish homework, have dinner, and then worry about contacting Isla. Perhaps she will be ready for you by then, my child.”

“Yeah,” Asriel sighs. “Okay, Mom.”

Chara watches Frisk and Alphys exchange a glance. They don’t think they can confront either of them in front of Toriel, but if Chara has to wait until they get home to corner Frisk, they will. They need to know what is making them act this way, because, based on their behavior, it is not good.

 

* * *

 

It’s hard to wake up, and once I do, I regret it.

Sans went down first. I remember that. I shrieked and tried to go to him because he only has a single HP, if someone wants to kill him and they hit him he’s _dead_ , and the tall skeleton turned to me.

I was furious, so I jumped on him, knife forgotten, trying to strike his joints with enough force to break them. That was stupid, in retrospect. He was bigger and stronger than me, so in close quarters he quickly gained the upper hand.

He struck me once, over the head. I remember being dazed, partially out of it, but I still tried to fight. I think – I think he sighed, mumbled something, then hit me again. And nothing after that.

My head is _sore_.

I go to move – but. But I can’t. I’m still in Alphys’s weird lab basement. She pretty much cleared out the upper level, but I could tell when we got off the elevator that she barely touched this level. It’s dark down here, too, the lighting is crappy and it’s cold and creepy.

None of this helps my current predicament. I am on a metal table. There are restraints around my wrists and ankles. They’re not too tight and they’re soft, but I don’t have a lot of wiggle room. My hands are down by my thighs, but not close enough to touch my leg to see if my knife is in its sheath, though I very much doubt it is.

When I try to sit up, I find my neck bound down, too. Damnit.

I open my mouth to call for Sans, but the tall skeleton from earlier leans into my line of sight. “You are awake,” he says. “I—”

I scream and thrash, then bare my teeth and snarl. Maybe I can scare him, but I’m not entirely sure of why I’m doing it. It feels impulsive and I feel hazy and I don’t like it. Did this fucker drug me?

He backs off, then returns. He reaches underneath the table behind my head and adjusts something. The head of the table comes up. I can see most of the room now, but there are only metal examination tables, a row of sinks, the skeleton, and cupboards and drawers on the opposite wall.

“Please drink this.” The skeleton – Gaster, that’s right, Gaster – raises a little foam cup with a straw sticking out of it.

When I don’t, he says, “I may have given you a head injury when I knocked you unconscious. Please drink. This will heal it.”

I’m already restrained. If he wants to hurt or kill me, he already has free reign, so there’s really no reason not to drink it. I seal my lips around the straw and wrinkle my nose, but I get it all down.

Some of my headache clears up. With that, my thoughts slow down, become more organized, which means I might have had a touch of a concussion. The pain in my wrist diminishes, too. “What was that?”

“Soda, I believe.” He doesn’t even look at me, he’s looking at a… I’m not sure what it is, but it’s a small touch screen connected via wire to a larger machine on the adjacent table. The soda was probably Alphys’s fault, but at least monster food doesn’t spoil. The soda was gross because it was gross soda, not because it’s been expired for years. “I apologize; it was all I could find on such short notice.”

He says nothing else. I need to find Sans. He’s not in this room and I’m kind of worried I might find a pile of dust instead of him but damnit I need to get out of here and look for him. “Let me go.”

This time Gaster does turn to me. I get the impression he would be raising an eyebrow, if he had eyebrows. “And return your capabilities of attack back to you? I think not. You very nearly threw me from this timeline.”

I open my mouth to protest, but that… is reasonable. Sans and I _did_ attack first. He only fought back in self-defense after trying to talk us down. I’m a human, I could kill him in one hit if I wanted to, so it makes sense for him to incapacitate me.

I try something else. “What do you want?”

He turns back to the screen and shrugs. “Nothing in particular.”

“Where is Sans?”

“In another room. He needs to rest after exhausting that much magic. He will likely sleep for a while.”

“You didn’t kill him?”

He looks at me again, surprised. “Of course not. I meant no harm to him, or to you.”

Relief floods me. Sans is okay. He’s okay and I think this is going to be better than he expected.

“May I ask you a question?” Gaster says.

I need to know more, about how Sans is, about what Gaster plans on doing in our timeline, but he has been nicely answering me. I should probably return the favor, if for no other reason than to encourage him to continue answering me. “Sure.”

“What is the nature of your relationship with my son?”

I blink, confused. “Son?”

He nods, way too casually. “Yes. Sans is my son. Did he not tell you?”


	3. Existence: that which has objective reality and persists independent of one’s presence.

Of course Sans would neglect to give me that detail. I’m sure it was deliberate. He was probably hoping he could take care of the issue before I found out and then I’d never know.

“Um,” I articulate. “No, he didn’t say. We were kind of in a hurry coming down here.”

Gaster nods. “I am Doctor W.D. Gaster, in case he did not have time to mention that. Who might you be?”

I’m talking to Sans’s _dad_. Sans _attacked_ his father, he thought his father might be dangerous. I have to assume Sans was right, that he knew, but Gaster’s being polite to me (except for the restraints, which are reasonable, given what just happened).

I don’t know what to think, but there’s no harm in talking, right? “I’m… Isla Reilly. I live on the surface. With Sans. And… your other son, Papyrus.”

He brightens visibly. “How is Papyrus?”

“He’s, uh. Doing well. He’s really taken to the surface. He’s taking cooking classes right now.”

“Has the monster integration gone well?”

“About as well as we could expect, I suppose. It was better at first, before the assholes had time to talk to other assholes and decide they were bored and miserable and needed someone to blame for it, but we’re doing our best.”

Gaster stares at me for a second. “I… see. And Sans… he is happy, on the surface?”

He says it like he knows of Sans’s tendency towards depression. I answer honestly. “Not always, no. But I think he’s happier than he has been in a long time.”

I would gain nothing by lying, right? If he really wants an answer, he can go to the surface and see for himself, so there is no point in doing something that might antagonize him. Not until he lets me go, at least.

He nods absent-mindedly and mumbles something to himself. He turns away from me to make an adjustment to the machine. I squirm. “Why did you separate Sans from me?”

“As I said, he needs to rest,” Gaster replies. “I put him in one of the beds. I brought you back here so I could restrain you.”

“You don’t need to anymore,” I say. “I’m not going to attack you.” Not unless he gives me a reason to.

He ignores that and says, “You never answered my original question.”

“What?”

He places a hand on the side of the machine and parts of it begin to light up. He grabs something off the top of it. It’s detachable, and looks like no more than a handle attached to a long, thin metal plate.

It is then he turns to me. “The nature of your relationship with my son,” he prompts.

Oh. “We’re partners,” I say. “It’s not really romantic, though. I haven’t been able to find the right word to describe – what the _fuck_ are you doing!?”

This I say in response to him pulling the hem of my shirt up so my abdomen is exposed. I instantly break out into a sweat, I feel a growl start up in my chest, muscles clenching so hard I cramp in several places.

“Please relax,” he says. “I will not harm you.” He leans over me. “What happened here? Were you injured?”

He touches one of my bullet scars with his index and middle fingers. I thrash, hissing and snarling, trying to block out the incoming panic with anger. I think I would have felt less vulnerable if he had touched me sexually. I’m barely comfortable with Sans touching my scars, let alone anyone else.

Gaster takes a step back. “Don’t fucking _touch_ me,” I spit at him, still yanking at the restraints, still growling. Damnit, I want to be scary, I want to be intimidating, I want to be the things my appearance precludes me from being.

“I apologize,” Gaster says. “I… did not expect you to react that way.”

“But you considered it,” I bite out, “or you would have removed the restraints.”

“That is not true; I simply wanted you to remain in the same place for the duration of the examination. Restraints were the easiest way to accomplish that. The protection they gave me from you was an added benefit.”

I’m still baring my teeth and the anger is leeching away and I’m starting to hyperventilate. Damn, this is _not_ the time to do this. I can do this later. Not now.

I clench my eyes shut, decide I don’t like that I can’t see what he’s going to do, and open them again. Gaster awkwardly reaches out and pats me on the head, like I’m three years old or something.

The absurdity of it calms me down a little, but before I can say anything about it he rubs my scalp and runs his fingers along a piece of my hair. “Forgive me for asking, but how old are you?”

“What?”

“Your hair is beginning to lose its color, which is something that happens in elderly humans, but I was under the impression you are fairly young. I admit the inconsistency is confusing me.”

“I’m going grey early,” I say. Sans told me he likes the grey hairs. “I’m thirty.”

“I see.” He threads his fingers through my hair again. It comes off awkward and creepy, but I think he means to be comforting. At least I don’t feel like I might have a panic attack anymore.

After a few seconds of awkward silence and head-pats he speaks. “You do not seem to be uncomfortable with physical contact in general, so may I ask what I did to trigger that intense of a response, so I can avoid it?”

This has gotten more and more surreal. I have to answer. “Don’t touch my scars.”

“Ah,” he says. Then, out of nowhere, “Are you having sex with Sans?”

At least three snarky answers run through my head, but I wait a few seconds before I speak. “I would think that would be obvious, given our ages and that we’ve been together for almost four years.”

“I did not know the duration of your relationship. I felt I had to ask since you specified it was not romantic.”

“It’s not, but we still have sex. Occasionally.”

“Recently, perhaps?”

He knows asking so many questions about his son’s sex life is weird, right? It’s even weirder to ask me. It would be less weird if he asked Sans. “Yeah? For how long was I unconscious?”

“No longer than an hour in this timeline.”

“Within the last few hours, then. How is this relevant?”

There is another pause. “I scanned you while you were unconscious,” Gaster says. “I used a machine that was previously useful for monster imaging. I presume the technology has gotten better since it was last popular, but I noticed something unusual. That was why I rigged up this.” He gestures to the machine on the adjacent table. “I wanted to get a better look.”

“Imaging techniques developed for monsters shouldn’t work on humans,” I say.

“That is correct, but I had a hunch. If you will allow me, I would like to use this on you now.” He shows me the plate attached to the handle. “Only the metal would have to be in contact with your abdomen.”

I should be fine if it’s just the plate. I don’t like people touching my stomach, I don’t like it when my doctors do it, but I’m usually mentally prepared. This time I was caught off guard. I probably would have been okay if he told me what he was going to do.

“Are there any risks?” I ask. Human imaging techniques have gotten better about radiation exposure, but there is still a minor risk. I want to be informed.

“Not that I am aware of,” Gaster replies, “though I will admit this is highly experimental. Even with successful integration I cannot imagine there would have been many cases of magical imaging studies done on humans.”

“Okay,” I say. Then, more to myself, “I’ll be – okay.”

He slowly lowers the plate to my stomach. It’s cold. I hold still and talk to distract myself. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

“Evidence of hybrid conception,” he replies easily.

I think about that for a moment. “If humans and monsters could have kids we would have definitely seen hybrids by now. Sans and I aren’t the only interracial couple.”

“You are disregarding the possibility of conception and pregnancy without proper evidence,” Gaster says. “A lack of offspring does not indicate that conception is impossible, it indicates that a full-term pregnancy has thus far been impossible. And conception is not impossible.”

I’m staring. He can’t mean what I think he means. “What?”

He leaves the plate on my stomach, picks up the touch-screen, and turns it so I can see it. Most of the screen is dark, but there is a very fuzzy outline of – oh my god, those are my reproductive organs, lit up in white on the screen, and I suddenly realize that this monster imaging technique is detecting magic, so it’s only detecting the part of me that came in contact with Sans’s ejaculate, and now his dad is here and he can _see_ it, OH MY GOD this is so embarrassing.

Gaster utterly ignores how humiliating this must be for me. He places his other hand on the machine, causing the lights to glow brighter and begin to flash. “And if I boost the power a bit, we can zoom in… here.” He points to a spot in my fallopian tube that is maybe slightly different from everything around it, but I can’t really tell. “Do you see that?”

“Maybe?” I say. The embarrassment is draining away into dread. Oh no. No, no, no, this can’t be happening.

“That is the hybrid equivalent to what humans call a zygote,” Gaster says. “You and Sans have been conceiving.” A pause. “Er – unless this is the first time he – ah. Unless this is the first time you engaged in sexual activity in such a way you combined your—”

“No.” My voice is getting higher pitched. “Not the first… if you’re asking whether he regularly cums inside me, the answer is yes. Are you saying I’m – that it’s possible I can—”

“Oh, no.” Gaster says, surprised. He gets a good look at my face and pauses. “Since this is not the first time, I would assume that you have been conceiving for quite some time. If you have not noticed symptoms of pregnancy, it seems likely that it ends soon after conception, and your body ejects the hybrid zygote during your next menstrual cycle. I have doubts that implantation would occur, especially if your scars mean you sustained injury to your reproductive organs.”

Okay. Okay. I can come to the obvious conclusion by myself, but I’m on the verge of freaking out here and I need to hear him say it clearly. “So – so I’m _not_ going to get pregnant, right?”

“I can’t say with certainty with such little data, but I would be shocked if you implanted or progressed beyond conception at all.” He turns back to the machine, plucking the plate off my belly and taking the screen with him. “For the record, I have been using human medical terms because I presume those are familiar to you, but they are not entirely accurate.”

“Yeah,” I say. Come on, I _knew_ I couldn’t get pregnant. I’m healthier now, but I still have lupus and I still have a lot of scar tissue in my abdomen. “Can you undo the restraints now?”

“Yes.” He reaches towards my left wrist to do so. “I apologize for any distress this may have caused you, but I presumed you would rather know—”

“Heya, Gaster.”

Sans is in the doorway, left eyesocket blazing.

 

* * *

 

Frisk is good at dodging. This is why Chara cannot corner them until they go to the bathroom.

They barge in. Frisk’s pants and underwear are around their knees; they are preemptively getting out another roll of toilet paper because someone (Asriel, probably) only left a couple of squares on the current roll.

“Um,” Frisk says, startled but nothing else. “I was gonna pee.”

Chara crosses their arms. “What are you and Alphys hiding?”

Frisk has one of the best poker faces Chara has ever seen. Honestly, Chara can only detect the nuances in Frisk’s behavior, the tiny twitches in their expressions, because they shared a body for years. Without that, Frisk would be able to lie to them just as well as they can lie to anyone else.

Frisk knows this. They quickly drop the façade. “We’re not even sure. Sans and Isla are… doing something.”

Chara makes a face. They did not need to know that. “That is disgusting.”

“Not like _that_ ,” Frisk corrects. “I tried calling them less than an hour ago. Right to voicemail, both of them. I… remembered some things. You know. The way we remember stuff from different timelines.”

Chara looks at them. They don’t care that Frisk is exposed. Sharing a body does that, apparently. Sometimes they are still genuinely surprised when they look in the mirror and see their own face instead of Frisk’s.

“So it’s _not_ an alternate timeline, but _like_ one?” Chara asks.

Frisk changes out the toilet paper roll and pees. They make zero effort to hide themself from Chara. They go about their business like they are alone, precisely the way they did when Chara lived inside their head. “Yes. Do you remember… well, there were a few things. A grey door in Waterfall. We saw someone inside. There were people outside the elevators in Hotland. Someone on the docks in Waterfall.”

As they speak, images and conversations float around in Chara’s mind. Grey-toned people speaking in voices that were simultaneously dreamlike and serious. The idea of another world, exactly the same but for one person, their existence removed. Someone shattered across time and space.

“It’s rude to talk about someone who’s listening,” Chara says. That line resonates more clearly in their mushy, unreliable memories. Frisk is right, it does feel like trying to remember one of the alternate timelines.

Frisk nods. They flush, pull their pants up, and wash their hands. “Everything was really vague… but put together it sounded like the former Royal Scientist was erased, individually, from this timeline.”

“From all of our timelines,” Chara realizes. “That would have happened before you Fell. Before Asriel was manipulating the timeline as Flowey, I bet. I wonder if his erasure was during a time when one of the other fallen humans was Underground.”

“That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I _remembered_ every interaction I had pertaining to Doctor Gaster, when I’m pretty sure I couldn’t really remember before. You can remember, too. So what does that mean?”

“His erasure from existence is incompletely epistatic to the timelines.”

Frisk gives them a blank, unimpressed look. Chara realizes what they said. “Epistasis originated as a genetics term, but now – never mind, sorry. He was shattered across time and space, right? Does that sound familiar?”

“Yeah.”

“That clearly was not a complete process, if we can remember him now and we interacted with him before.”

“And we did interact with him before,” Frisk adds. “I think? I think that was him. We shouldn’t have been able to, if he doesn’t exist.”

“He was not in every timeline, either,” Chara says. “Neither were the people who spoke of him.”

Frisk nods. “It… was rare, when we found them.”

Silence. Chara breaks it by blurting, “Do you think this has anything to do with the third?”

The third person who was with them Underground. The other person Chara remembers fighting for control of the timeline, of Frisk’s body. Things always went so much more smoothly when they, Frisk, and the other agreed.

Frisk’s eyes are shadowed. “I… don’t know. But I don’t think so. Sans wouldn’t have run off if it did, he would have come to us. Chara, do you remember what Doctor Gaster looked like?”

Suddenly Sans’s involvement clicks into place. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Frisk says. “I’m pretty sure he was a skeleton.”

 

* * *

 

The only reason he abstains from attacking is his father’s proximity to his partner. He prepares, ignoring the strain from summoning the Blasters.

“Sans, don’t you dare!” Isla yells. “You be patient and talk this out instead!”

Gaster raises both hands, palm-out. “Are you feeling alright?” he asks. “You exerted yourself and your HP is… low.”

Low, he says. “Get away from her,” Sans says. She isn’t visibly hurt and if she insists on talking, he should oblige. As long as Gaster doesn’t do something stupid. “Why’d you strap her down, old man?”

His father steps away from Isla, who rolls her eyes and says, “Because I’m human and I could kick both your asses if I wanted to. Sans, please get rid of the creepy skull lasers, I don’t like them. And come let me up, if you’re not going to let him help.”

He approaches slowly, keeping his eyesockets trained on Gaster. “Keep your hands where I can see ‘em.”

At least the other skeleton is complying. Sans lets the Blasters disappear and undoes the restraints around his partner’s wrists and neck. As soon as she can, she sits up and undoes the ones around her ankles.

“It occurs to me,” Gaster says slowly, “that I should apologize for pulling your soul out to check its color, Isla. I believe that action caused my son to assume I was going to attack you.”

Sans cringes, but Isla doesn’t look surprised. Great. Gaster already told her.

She slides off the examination table and immediately pulls him into a hug. He returns it. She is solid and warm and, most importantly, unhurt and unafraid.

Not that he expected her to be afraid of his dad. It takes a lot to scare her.

When they pull apart, Isla wraps her arm around his shoulders. “I think,” she says to Gaster, “we would like some reassurance that you aren’t here to mess with the timeline.”

He smiles sarcastically. “I doubt I could, even if I tried. I would not try, considering how badly my last attempt ended.”

Sans feels himself coming down. He supposes that makes sense. Gaster still has that quality of impermanence, that outline that doesn’t look right, like a puzzle piece with edges that are too incorrect to fit. He probably can’t stay.

He probably can’t stay. He is probably incapable of staying. Sans feels… too many things regarding that, most of them conflicting.

“Do you feel better?” Isla asks him, squeezing his shoulders.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets. Shrugs. “No more fighting,” he says, which isn’t an answer and the look Isla gives him tells him she knows he’s dodging on purpose.

Gaster nods. “I can agree to that. I apologize, Sans. I did not consider my presence in this timeline might impact you the way it has.”

He feels very abruptly like a small child caught doing something wrong. Here is father, apologizing for things he could never have predicted, and Sans hasn’t even apologized for the obvious. “S’fine. Sorry for attackin’ you. I… jumped the gun when you checked Isla’s soul.”

“And I followed his lead,” Isla adds. “I apologize, too. I could have killed you.”

Gaster makes a dismissive gesture. “It is behind us now. Shall we go upstairs so we can talk?”

Sans shuffles along behind his father. He remembers being even shorter than he is now, trying to keep up, being told no, don’t touch that, until later, when he was helping with calculations and interpreting their measurements and always going home early because if their dad wasn’t going to be around Papyrus definitely needed his brother. He won’t ever regret that, he won’t regret putting Papyrus first—

Isla interrupts his train of thought by slipping her hand in his. “Sans, your dad told me something… interesting while you were sleeping,” she says. “We’re conceiving human-monster hybrids.”

His skull almost pops off his vertebrae with how fast he turns to face her. “ _What!?_ ”

Gaster steps into the elevator. Isla has to pull Sans on. “I’m not pregnant,” she continues. “I don’t think I’ve ever been pregnant, and you know my body hates itself, let alone foreign things. But our… reproductive material has been fusing.”

Shocked, Sans looks at his father, who beams with scientific discovery. “Yes. I am unsurprised, considering that monsters and humans could interbreed easily long ago. It did not happen often, even when it was possible, but when it did, those pregnancies shared one key aspect with monster pregnancies: they were not accidental.”

“Well, yeah,” Sans says, still floored. “Even then I can’t imagine there were perfect race relations, or there wouldn’t have been a war. It would’ve been a big risk for interracial couples to have kids.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Gaster says. “It was clear your partner does not want children, Sans, so I will ask you: do you want children?”

“What?” he squawks. Why is this so embarrassing? “No!”

“So – in your case, at least, and I do despise conclusions based upon a single piece of data – conception appears to be more similar to human conception. It can happen despite the intentions of the individuals participating in sexual intercourse. Pregnancy may be more similar to monster pregnancy – that is, it cannot occur unless the participants intend it.”

“That’s not right,” Isla says. “We know of interracial couples who want children and have tried to have them naturally. Nobody thus far has had a detectable pregnancy.”

Gaster strokes his chin. “Right, I forgot you mentioned that. Perhaps our races have become reproductively incompatible, then. Or perhaps we are missing something.”

The elevator chimes and they get off. It’s much brighter up here. Sans glances towards the blasted-in door. He owes Alphys an apology for that.

“As long as we aren’t gonna accidentally get pregnant, I don’t care,” he says. Damn, he can’t imagine trying to raise a freaking kid. Frisk, Asriel, and Chara are different. They’re someone else’s kids. Sans can be the cool uncle, but he’d be useless as a dad.

“For future research, I would recommend getting a closer look at the hybrid zygote,” Gaster says. He sets the machine he is carrying on the floor. “This only gave us a rudimentary picture of what was going on. Perhaps other imaging techniques would be better suited. Something transvaginal would likely be the best option.”

Isla gives him a flat look. “You’re my partner’s father. You’re not sticking anything up my twat.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it, since my son seems to do that often enough,” Gaster replies, and Sans feels his skull burn blue at how cheekily he says it. Isla goes scarlet, too. “Any legitimate study would take more time than I have in this timeline.”

Just like that, the embarrassment is gone. “I had a hunch,” Sans says after a moment. “I knew you wouldn’t stay.”

That wipes the cheer right off the old man’s face. He rubs his skull awkwardly. “I… truly do not have much time. If there is anything you want to know, now is the time to ask.”

Isla jumps right on it. “What, exactly, happened to you and how did you get to be here? Why can’t you stay in this timeline? Before, when you said you’d made a ‘temporal error,’ what did that mean?”

“Where are you, where do you go, when are you, when do you go, and how do you go,” Sans says, just to catch the things her more specific questions might have missed.

Gaster considers for a moment. “Have you experienced remembering alternate timelines, Sans? It does not feel like a normal memory. It is different. More difficult to recall in its entirety and far slipperier. The harder you try to remember details, the faster they seem to vanish.”

Sans looks right at him. “Yeah,” he answers gruffly.

“This is… similar,” Gaster says. “I have appeared in many, many timelines. I know this. I have trouble remembering them. I also know there are many timelines I have not, will not, or did not appear within.”

“Hang on,” Isla interrupts. “By _timelines_ do you mean the single, repeated day Frisk took to get out of the Underground?”

“They include that,” Gaster responds. “That is what I have focused on. I think.” He scratches his skull. “I’m afraid I cannot give you solid answers, since I do not have very many solid memories.”

“So… you jump from timeline to timeline,” Sans says, trying to wrap his head around this. “How?”

“Space and time do not mean the same to me as they do to everyone you know. I don’t know how, exactly. In fact, I feel… _pulled_ in a particular direction sometimes. Pulled to a particular space and time.”

Something about the way he says that sends chills up Sans’s spine. “So you aren’t actually occupying space,” Isla says. “Which is why you look… weird.”

Gaster nods. “My presence here and now is unstable. It is always unstable, because I am simultaneously in more than one location and time.”

“Tends to happen when you blast pieces of yourself across time and space,” Sans mutters.

Isla elbows him and he knows that might have come off rude, but he doesn’t care. “Did you interact with Frisk this time?” he continues. “If you did, did you notice their passenger?”

“Which one?” Gaster asks.

Sans stares at him for a moment. “How about we start with Chara, and then we talk about the one who wasn’t Chara.”

“I am unsure whether I noticed Chara or whether repressed knowledge and memories predisposed me to look for them,” Gaster replies. He lets out a short sigh. “Of course, ‘repressed knowledge and memories’ is not an entirely accurate phrase—”

“We got that,” Sans interrupts, impatient.

“Well, I noticed them. Have they regained corporeality?”

“Yes?” Isla answers, tone questioning because he said that like he expected it.

“I may have helped them achieve that,” Gaster says. “Perhaps Frisk will remember better than me. How many years has it been since the barrier fell?”

“Just over six years,” Sans says. His father’s a genius, but he is also scatterbrained. “Now what about the one that wasn’t Chara?”

“I believe it is often their actions that bring me into a timeline,” Gaster says. He smirks a little. “Which may have been deliberate on my part. It brings me satisfaction to make them work for the smallest things.”

“They’re not…” Sans stops, then starts again. “They’re not still here, are they? Chara remained with Frisk after we got out. Are they still here, too?”

Gaster shrugs. “I do not know. If they are, they can no longer control Frisk. This form of entertainment is not nearly as… interactive.”

“What?” Isla deadpans.

“Reading,” Gaster explains, “is not as interactive as video games.”

There is a pause. Isla gives Sans a look, like _is your dad crazy_ , and Sans gives her a miniscule shrug. When she looks away, he glances around surreptitiously, but can’t decide in which direction he would turn right now if he had a really great skeleton pun.

“Is what happened to you replicable?” Isla asks, deciding to change the subject.

Gaster tilts his head to one side. “Yes, but it would be extremely unlikely. This timeline appears to have gone so well I have doubts anyone would attempt to alter or control it. I also have doubts the necessary resources are accessible.”

It’s gone well, he says. There are racists and assassination attempts and close calls and a lack of equality and he says it’s gone well.

“It could be a lot worse,” Gaster says casually. “Humans could have enslaved monsters when the barrier fell. Or monsters could have been aggressive and hostile, which would have invited racial conflict.”

Sans looks at him and wonders if he has seen those things in other timelines. Can they be called timelines if they exist simultaneously? Would they have to be called alternate universes? Did each fallen human and Flowey establish a separate loop, a separate branch on a tree? Which tiny little twig are they on and how does it relate to the trunk and roots and branches and all the other tiny little twigs? Where did the roots come from? When did this thing start and when does it end?

“Since memories of you were… impacted when your existence was removed, will we remember this?” Isla asks.

“I don’t know,” Gaster replies. “That is not up to me, and I know of nothing you could do to ensure it.”

That settles it. What other chance will he have? This could be it. Yeah, he’s a hell of a procrastinator, he waits until his dad _doesn’t exist_ to do this, but…

“Isla, could you gives us a minute?” Sans asks.

She looks at him for a long moment. “Sure,” she says. She turns to Gaster. “Not so nice fighting you, but other than that, nice meeting you.”

“Likewise,” Gaster responds. Isla doesn’t want to go outside in the heat, so she heads up to Alphys’s old room. The escalators work since Sans turned the power back on.

“I won’t claim to know much on the subject, but that woman is a keeper,” his father says. “She’s good for you.”

“How can you say that when you barely know me?” Sans asks.

Gaster’s smile falters and Sans feels his walls reflexively start to come up. He stops himself from doing that and makes himself talk. “You barely paid attention to us when we were younger. I raised Paps, before you were gone and after you were gone. You only started paying attention to me when I started helping out around the lab. What the fuck was that about?”

He says it bluntly. Gaster sighs and can’t make eyesocket contact anymore. “I… was neglectful to you and your brother,” he murmurs. “I was obsessed with figuring out the timelines. It was important, but that does not excuse my behavior as a parent. I am sorry, Sans. I truly am. If I could go back—”

“No. That sorta thinkin’ was what did this to you in the first place.”

Gaster chuckles. “You are correct.”

“So…” he pauses. “I know you can’t stay, but are you gonna come back?”

“I do not know,” Gaster replies. “I am constantly being pulled in many, many directions. This instance proves I am capable of returning to a timeline in which I have already appeared, but I don’t know how likely it is I will come back. If I do… that is, if you and Papyrus would have me, and I understand—”

“We would. If you can find a way back, come back.”

“Even if I cannot, I know you will be okay.” Another pause. “Sans… I’m proud of you. You should know that.”

His edges are starting to shift. Sans feels… he doesn’t know. Not yet. But he manages to get out a, “Thanks, Dad.”

“Keep fighting for this timeline. It has so much potential.”

“Sure thing.”

“And follow up on the hybrid conception research. It’s worth pursuing, even if nothing comes of it.”

He laughs a little at that. “Okay.”

More quietly, he says, “Go upstairs and retrieve your partner.”

Sans knows the old man won’t be here when he comes down. He meanders on over to the escalator. He can’t think of anything else to say, so he nods. Gaster nods back, and for once, it’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My headcanon for Gaster is that he trolls the Player by forcing them to manipulate the game's code to get all the hints about him in a timely manner and then doesn't actually reveal much at all. He knows what's up.


	4. Speculation: conjectural contemplation of some subject.

“Do you think they’re related?” Chara asks.

To this, Frisk can only shrug. “Maybe.” They pause. They should have told Chara this already, but they… forgot? Is that right?

This timeline thing still confuses Frisk, and they had some measure of control over it.

“Doctor Gaster helped me restore you,” Frisk says. “That day, I went to the Underground because I wanted to help him. I’m not sure why I suddenly decided he needed help. You know how these memories are.”

Chara nods and motions for them to continue. Frisk breathes a little easier when it looks as though they aren’t going to be angry. “Time and space don’t restrict him. He was able to… go somewhere else, or somewhen else, to get what you needed to separate from me. He met me at your grave. I don’t know what he did or how he did it. It was pretty painful, and when it was over, you were there.”

They know they made a mistake when guilt tracks across Chara’s face. “Frisk. I’m sorry.”

“I’d do it again,” Frisk insists. Chara needs to know that. “I’d do it every day, if I had to.”

“I know. I wouldn’t want you to.”

Chara’s hands twitch, palms rotating forward just slightly. Frisk takes the hint and closes the distance between them, enclosing the smaller human in a hug. They go slow, so Chara can push them away or escape if they need to, but they don’t.

“Did you have to recruit the other?” Chara murmurs.

“No,” Frisk replies. “You know I could never tell they were there. Not like you could. I never understand what you meant when you sarcastically scolded me for laughing at or heckling Snowdrake’s mom.”

“I wasn’t scolding you. I was scolding them. They were being an idiot; they deserved to feel like an idiot.”

This feels good. Right. Frisk knows they _could_ bring it up and it wouldn’t be a problem. Chara and Asriel are both technically a century older than Frisk. Chara’s the oldest going by original birthdates.

But they’re physically almost twelve. They still have an eleven-year-old brain in their head. They’re the smartest, definitely, but they’re still eleven to Frisk’s sixteen. If they were in Frisk’s head, they’d still be ten.

Better to wait until Chara has covered some of the size difference between them. They can make it a challenge. See who ends up taller when they’re both fully grown.

“I think the other left and that’s what made us feel like we couldn’t RESET,” Frisk admits. “I could never sense them, but… I have this gut feeling.”

Chara pulls back and Frisk relinquishes them from the hug. “I’m not sure about that.”

“Why not?”

“We… each had our reasons for starting over when we were done. We were both scared of what would come next. I did not want to let Asriel go and you wanted to save him. But them… why would they want to go back, especially after the barrier broke? Wasn’t that the point? They were with us, but they weren’t _really_ there. They didn’t walk with us or die with us. They watched.”

Frisk listens attentively. Chara often won’t talk about what bothers them. This third… person was something that bothered them very much while they were Underground. Apparently this other person sometimes wrestled with Frisk _and_ Chara for control over the timeline and Frisk’s body. They think they’d be able to remember that, but they don’t.

But they believe Chara, and Chara says it happened. “So… what do you think?”

Chara crosses their arms and frowns. “I think… they missed us. They wanted to see more of us. More sides of us, more of what we had to say, more everything. That was their reason for going back. And if they missed us, I think it is logical to conclude they found some other way of watching us. I don’t think they would have left us.”

Frisk thinks about it, then beams. “That’s sweet.”

Chara scowls. “It is not. It’s creepy and violating and they _suck_.”

“They didn’t suck all the time. They helped us sometimes.”

“They were a gross human. What if they watch us for the rest of our lives, huh? What if they watched you pee just now? Disgusting.”

“Chara, _you_ watched me pee just now.”

Their cheeks flare crimson. “I’m allowed! We shared a body. I had to learn to pee with your body!”

Frisk feels themself starting to smirk. They peel back the shower curtain and pull off their socks. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“You go right ahead!” Chara barks, face tomato-red at this point. “I don’t care!”

They dig in just to prove how much they don’t care. Giggling internally, Frisk sheds the rest of their clothes. When they take their underwear off, they pull back on one side of the elastic waistband and slingshot it right at Chara’s face.

Chara squawk-shrieks, flinging their underwear to the floor. “ _Frisk_!”

Frisk is laughing too hard to see how red their face is now. “You – you—” and they have rendered the always-so-articulate Chara speechless. The other human snarls squeakily and yanks the door open.

Asriel is there, fist raised to knock. His presence physically bars Chara from storming out. “Is everything okay?” he asks. “I heard yelling…”

He trails off when he notices Frisk is naked and also goes scarlet. To top it off, Frisk gives their butt a little wiggle. “ _Frisk_!” Asriel squeals, pulling his ears over his eyes. “Put some clothes on!”

“Frisk is being utter garbage,” Chara announces loudly. They shove Asriel, but the size difference means Asriel only takes half a step back so Chara can storm out of the bathroom properly. They slam the door behind them.

Oh well. Asriel might spend the next day or so being embarrassed. Chara will be pissy for a few hours until they either get their hands on some chocolate or come up with a suitable revenge prank.

It’s not even ten minutes later Chara enters the bathroom silently, suddenly pulls back the shower curtain, and throws an entire pitcher of ice-cold water on Frisk.

Frisk shrieks reflexively because that’s COLD. Chara cackles. They’re both going to get lectures from their mom about yelling in the house, but it’s worth it.

 

* * *

 

When we make it back to the surface, it’s cooling off and the sun is setting. Sans is too tired to teleport, so it’s a slow trek back home.

I’m on the phone with Frisk almost immediately because they tried to call us both. They want to know what happened. I say we’ll tell them later.

When we get home, Papyrus makes us dinner and demands to know why we thought it was okay to turn our phones off during our date. Then he realizes why most couples would turn their phones off during an outing, goes orange, and says we should shack up in Mettaton’s resort the next time we need a change in environment.

At least this gets him off our case. Sans and I don’t date, unless eating junk food while watching movies on our couch counts as a date. And we’ve never, and probably will never, have sex outside of this house. The most adventurous place we’ve fucked is the shower, which will never happen again because water is a terrible lubricant and Sans tried to compensate by thrusting harder, which unbalanced me and I slipped and bashed an elbow and knee up, so. Never again.

Wait, we’re probably going to have to fuck in the lab when we get around to doing the hybrid conception research. Damnit. Not looking forward to that.

We’re tired, so we go right to bed. I’m almost always awake first, and the next morning is no different.

When I shuffle downstairs Frisk and Chara are in our kitchen. Frisk is cooking and Chara is sitting at the table, reading.

I stop because I’m wearing a big T-shirt and nothing else. I tend to forgo underwear when it’s warm enough and I’m not on my period.

Chara makes a face. “Do _not_ tell me Sans is going to come strutting down here half-naked.”

“Sans never struts,” Frisk says. “He’d probably look hilarious strutting, though.”

“Let me get dressed,” I say, backing out of the kitchen because I’m not confident my butt is totally covered.

Sans grumbles and groans when I try to wake him up, so I tell him Frisk and Chara are here and leave to let him take his time to wake up.

“Frisk, what are you making?” I ask when I return to the kitchen.

“Oatmeal,” Frisk replies. They look excited. “I’m gonna put in cinnamon and sugar, and when it’s done cooking I’ll melt honey and yogurt in it and we have berries to mix in, if you want.”

“We don’t have berries.”

“We brought some over.”

“Don’t forget the magic, Frisk,” Chara says without looking up.

“Oh,” Frisk says. I direct them to a cupboard by the refrigerator and they pull out our container of MTT-brand Magic Monster Food Powder. They add a few scoops to the oatmeal.

The idea belonged to two human undergraduate students at Ebott University. They took it to Alphys, who kept them in on the project as she recruited monster and human scientists. They put together a compound that, when added to non-magical food, gives it all the magical properties of monster food. It was made available for purchase four months ago. It’s tasteless, but kind of gritty, which is something I know the team is still working on. Mettaton funded the product, so it’s under his brand, but I know Alphys has since handed over the reins to someone whose expertise more closely matches the project.

I don’t mind the texture if it means I don’t poop. My shift to monster food means my gastrointestinal issues have decreased in frequency and intensity. The powder means I can cook again, when before I’d been limited to pre-made monster food.

I try to help, but Frisk tells me to sit down. Sans comes downstairs just as they are finishing up.

“Your shorts are on inside-out,” Chara tells him bluntly.

“Meh,” he replies. He slumps into a chair and waits for Frisk to get him a bowl. He’s the type of person who takes a while to wake up. Frisk is that way too, which is why they are sympathetic.

Chara raids our chocolate chips to throw into their oatmeal. I go light on the berries. Magical food isn’t completely gone until it hits a human’s colon, and the seeds can be hard on my scarred intestines.

“So what did you two do about Doctor Gaster?” Frisk asks as we are eating.

I glance at Sans. He stirs his oatmeal and doesn’t look up. “Not much,” I reply. “He left of his own volition.”

“You should probably start at the beginning,” Chara says.

I look at Sans again. Is he ready for this? He finally lifts his head and catches my eye. “It’s alright,” he tells me. “They obviously remembered too, or they wouldn’t be askin’.”

He explains that Gaster was his father and he’d been obsessed with cracking the timeline magic. That was why he felt the urge to stop Gaster. It’s the same reason he felt so threatened by Chara when they got their body back. He cannot stand the thought of this timeline ending or being altered.

He tones down the fight he started and completely skips the hybrid fertilization part of the conversation. I’m fine with that. There’s no reason to tell anyone who isn’t a scientist and can’t help us begin to research the phenomenon.

Sans focuses on what Gaster said about himself and about this alleged third person who was with Frisk and Chara during their share of timeline-manipulating. I feel out of the loop, but all three of them have tried to explain it to me and none of them did a good job so I’m probably going to stay out of the loop.

Frisk tells us Gaster helped them give Chara a physical form. They have clearly already told Chara this. They forgot the same way everyone forgot most things about Gaster when he had his accident.

Chara is the one who asks. “Does that mean we are going to forget about this?”

Sans stares at the table, expression blank. A little crease appears between Frisk’s eyebrows.

“It seems likely,” I say. “It would be consistent with what has happened in the past.”

“Then why haven’t we forgotten already?” Frisk questions. “Shouldn’t our memories have disappeared the moment Doctor Gaster left this timeline?”

“I dunno about that,” Sans says without looking up. “When he first disappeared, I noticed things goin’ fuzzy, so I… compiled some reminders. I wonder if that’s why I was able to remember some things and nobody else seemed to.”

I scoot my chair closer to his and stick a hand in his hoodie pocket. He uncurls his fingers so he can hold my hand.

“There is no point dwelling on it,” Chara says. “If it is like the alternate timelines, there isn’t much we can do to control what we will forget or remember and to what extent.” They pause, considering, then ask Sans, “How did you know where Gaster was? Does it have to do with that machine you always kept in your basement in the Underground? The one you covered with a sheet?”

I turn to him. “Is that the same machine in _our_ basement?”

He scowls a little and Chara smirks. “Yeah. It’s broken, and I tried for a really long time to fix it up, but all I’ve gotten it to do is tell me when there’s a disturbance in the timeline.”

“What did it used to do?” I ask.

He kneads my palm with his fingertips. “It… was part of what Gaster tried to use to move freely within the timeline. It was really the only salvageable thing out of his research, so I took it. I can’t fix it. I won’t ever be able to make it useful for its original purpose, and neither will anyone else.”

There is a pause. “Maybe,” Frisk says quietly, “that’s for the best.”

Sans relaxes. “Heh. You’re right, kiddo.”

He pulls his hands out of his pockets, releasing mine as he does so. And, without any prompting or provocation whatsoever, he scoops up some oatmeal, pulls the tip of his spoon back with a finger, and lets it fly.

It lands with a sad _plop_ on Chara’s right hand. They glare daggers at him. “Nice aim, asshole.”

His grin widens. “You’re right. I need more practice.”

He goes to get another scoop, but I grab his hand and hold it there. “You are _not_ starting a food fight.” I am not above scolding my partner. “What are you, five?”

He winks. “Five foot tall, exactly.”

“You will be five feet under if you fling more of that at me,” Chara threatens. They aggressively wipe their hand clean with a napkin.

“I’m about to send you both outside,” I say. “You can fight out there.”

“I don’t mean to ruin the mood,” Frisk breaks in. “But, Sans… why did you try to fix that machine up in the first place? Was it because you wanted to override my control of the timeline? Or Chara’s? Or was it because Chara came back and you wanted to reverse that?”

Sans grimaces and Chara’s expression goes totally neutral. “Jeez, Frisk. Tear my heart out, why dontcha.”

Frisk wilts for a second, then their face sets stubbornly. “Those are legitimate questions.”

“Yeah, they are.” Sans sighs. “I first started workin’ on that machine ‘cause I wanted to see my dad again. It wasn’t just him, either, his team was killed when that happened. I survived ‘cause I could teleport, and I was hopin’ I could bring everyone back by reversing the accident. I didn’t understand what was wrong with my memories and I just wanted to fix it all.” A pause. He’s never told me any of this before, but I can’t hold that against him because I don’t know how much of it he forgot. “I started diggin’ through my old man’s notes and realized I didn’t know near enough to pick up where he left off, so I moved Paps and me to Snowdin. Fresh start, ya know. I focused on takin’ care of Paps for a while. Managed to convince myself there was no point in working on my dad’s stuff. Then you fell, kid.”

Frisk winces. From the way Chara’s face moves, I can tell they are biting the inside of their cheek.

Sans shrugs. “You know how that went. When I realized… heh. I should say every time I realized you were manipulating the timeline, I picked up the research again. I even enlisted Alphys a few times, not that she remembers it. And every time you reset, whatever little progress I made vanished. Was pretty frustrating, kiddo. So I just… quit. Watched you instead.”

“I’m sorry,” Frisk says quietly, but Sans waves them off.

“Nah, kid. We’ve had this talk before. I don’t need a hundred apologies. Not from either of you and not from the prince. I just need ya to keep makin’ this timeline better.”

“You didn’t answer their other question,” Chara points out. “Did you start working on it again when Frisk brought me back?”

“Nope,” Sans replies. “The only solution I considered for you was killing you.”

“That was reasonable,” Chara responds immediately. “I thought about killing me too.”

Frisk’s arm shifts first, then Chara’s. I think they are holding hands under the table. I know they do that a lot in private, but Chara usually feels very vulnerable when they accept comfort, so it’s better to pretend not to notice.

I glance at Sans. He looks _exhausted_. It’s no surprise; he just saw his absentee, technically-nonexistent father for the first time in years. He will need privacy and rest to recuperate. I’m glad he was able to talk to Frisk and Chara, but I know he likely didn’t want to talk this soon. He usually wants time to himself to process anything that is emotionally difficult for him, but that’s okay. I can wait until he’s ready to talk.

“Chara,” I say. “Did you want to have a session today?”

“Asriel wanted to see you yesterday, so you should see him first,” they reply. “If you still have energy after him, I can do it today, but if you don’t I can wait until tomorrow.”

Right. Asriel is okay now, but when his symptoms worsen he always gets very clingy with me. I’ve been seeing him every day, even if we don’t have sessions every day, but yesterday was kind of… distracting.

I nod. “When you head home, you can send him over. What are your plans for today?”

“It’s Saturday, so I’m going to the Embassy with Dad,” Frisk says. They are the Ambassador for Monsterkind, but having Toriel for a mother means their education comes first. Most of Frisk’s work falls on the weekends because of that.

“I’m reading all weekend,” Chara says. “But I will probably clean our room while Frisk is out.”

“It’s not that bad,” Frisk says.

Chara scowls at them. “You constantly leave your underwear on the floor.”

“Do you like it better on your head?”

Chara’s cheeks flare red. They pinch Frisk’s arm, which makes them jump and yelp. Sans is staring off into space. He doesn’t even grin at this. I should put him on the couch and put a cartoon on.

“Thank you for making breakfast, Frisk,” I say. “It was good to see you two. Don’t worry about cleaning up, I’ve got it. Don’t forget your book, Chara.”

They both stand. They look at Sans, noting his uncharacteristic silence, but neither of them says anything.

“Sure thing,” Frisk smiles. “Later.”

“I will tell Asriel he can come over in twenty minutes,” Chara says, and it’s kind of funny they can accurately calculate the time it will take me to clean up and do something with Sans. Kind of sad, too.

Before I can say anything, Sans speaks up. “Kiddo. Frisk. I, uh… know I never say it, but I love ya.”

Frisk stares at him in shock, but he’s not done. “And… you too, Chara. Your jokes suck and you’re a little shitstain, but I love you, too.” A pause. “Fuck, that was bad. I’m terrible at this. Damnit.”

I’m too surprised to do anything. Chara is the one who breaks the silence. “ _My_ jokes suck?” they demand in mock outrage. “Your jokes suck, you asshole.” They stomp over to him. “Stand up. I am going to hug you, you are not going to stab me with bones but we are both going to remember all those times you stabbed me with bones, it is going to last two-and-a-half seconds _precisely_ , and it is not going to be weird.”

“Um,” Sans says, eyesockets wide.

“Obviously Frisk loves you too and all that sappy shit,” Chara says. “And I love you even though you’re a shit-eating, lazy fucker with an awful sense of humor.”

Sans’s shock fades. He stands and grins. “Aw. C’mere, you raging helldemon.”

Chara decisively steps forward and locks their arms around him. He deliberately musses up their hair with one of his hands. He still has an inch on them, but that probably won’t last long.

Frisk launches themself forward, wrapping their arms around Chara and Sans and sandwiching Chara in the middle. “I love you _both_ ,” they insist. “I love everyone and I love hugs.”

“Frisk!” Chara snaps. “I said two-and-a-half seconds! It’s been five!”

“Don’t care!” Frisk responds, sing-song. Sans chuckles. “Hugs for ten seconds!”

Chara tries to move, but Frisk is bigger and Sans is doing nothing to help either of them so he’s just in the way. “No!” they complain. “Hugging for that long is weird!”

“Every time you protest I’m adding on ten seconds!” Frisk proclaims joyously. “We’re at twenty!”

“Frisk you are _asking_ for another ice-water shower—”

While the kids bicker and everyone is distracted, I pull out my phone and snap a picture or four. Asgore and Toriel are going to _love_ this.

 

* * *

 

The conversation they have with Alphys the next day gets her all worked up, just like Sans thought it would.

“Oh my god!!!” she screeches. “Why didn’t I think of th-that!?!? _Obviously_ no pregnancies d-d-doesn’t mean no fertilization!! I’m such an idiot!!”

Sans gives her the patchwork machine Gaster made. Alphys assumes Sans made it. Isla told him earlier to let her make that assumption and he agreed. No need to discuss his father with anyone who doesn’t remember anything. Which is everyone, aside from Isla and Frisk and Chara.

He provides the magic input while Alphys looks for the, uh, fertilized egg. Still feels weird to even think about it.

Alphys is chattering away. “We should run other tests, too. Draw blood, run hormone l-levels. Do some imaging studies with our existing technology and then m-make adjustments to get better images. I don’t know a lot about human pregnancy so we’ll probably have to recruit some human doctors?? And oh my god, what if we can develop a – a medication or something that makes it so interracial couples can have babies?? OH MY GOD, we’d have all th-these hybrid babies running around—”

“Let’s focus on measurements first, okay?” Isla says from her supine position on Alphys’s couch. “We can contact interracial couples and say we’re doing a study.”

“We shouldn’t publicize it,” Sans says. “Probably be best if we tried to keep it on the down low. Doubt the racists would like this very much.”

Isla scowls, but doesn’t disagree. Alphys nods. “Y-y-you’re probably right. It would b-be a good idea to start with a-an observational study for th-that reason, too.”

“We'd have to split them into two groups,” Isla says. “Those in which the human would be carrying and those in which the monster would be carrying, if it were possible. And I suppose we wouldn’t include couples in which neither person could become pregnant.”

“That includes us,” Sans points out. “You can’t get pregnant.”

“I meant biologically male humans with monsters with bodies that wouldn’t allow for pregnancy.” She looks at him. “Couldn’t _you_ get pregnant, hypothetically?”

“You’ve got no way of getting your egg into my body without it dying, so no,” he replies. “With a human male, I dunno. Maybe. Not that I would ever want to.”

“Don’t monster pregnancies vary in length?” she asks.

“Yes, depending on the monsters involved,” Alphys answers. “That determines th-the offspring, and the type of the offspring determines the l-length of the pregnancy.”

“And monster bodies are already so different,” Isla says. “Maybe we should start with couples involving human females. Our pregnancies are generally the same length and the process of fertilization is the same for all humans. There would be fewer confounding variables if we looked at human females first.”

“You’re right,” Alphys says. “W-w-we should poll everyone, too… ask them if they would h-have children naturally, if they c-could.” She pauses. “W-would you two participate?”

“In the observational study,” Sans says. “Not if you get to a point where you’re actually tryin’ to knock people up.”

“I suppose any study or experiment would be thrown out instantly if we participated as subjects and scientists,” Isla says. “You’ve got plenty of scientists and doctors to pick from. You could recruit students from the university to help with menial tasks. There aren’t many interracial couples – well, yes, there are, but from a statistical sample size viewpoint, there aren’t many. We would probably be more valuable as subjects than as scientists, so yes, we will participate for now.”

Alphys nods. “Great! Uh, this data will probably be useless… we should probably start by l-looking right after sex and keep looking until the hybrid zygote is expelled… and we’ll n-need better pictures, maybe it would be easier to go in and view the zygote directly…”

“For humans, implantation is typically eight to ten days after conception,” Isla says. “So you’re probably looking at multiple measurements every day for at least that long.”

Sans looks at her. Does that mean what he thinks it means? “Are you sayin’ we gotta have sex on demand when we get around to doin’ this?”

“Well, yeah,” Isla replies. “We have to time it with my cycle, which is pretty irregular in the first place.”

“I d-didn’t think of that,” Alphys says. “We’ll have to determine ovulation time for each subject, t-too. I should s-start writing this down…”

“You’ll have to control for everything you can,” Sans realizes. “Even things like sex position.”

Alphys goes red. Isla snorts in laugher. “Good luck with that one.”

When Alphys goes to get paper and a pen, Sans looks at his partner. “We still on the same page about all this?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Sans, the idea of being pregnant and lugging around an infant _repulses_ me. I mean, my friends’ baby, I can hold her for a few minutes and it’s fine, but I’m sick and my issues would definitely have an impact on any kids I’d have.”

“Good,” he says, relieved. He’d been sort of worried all this talk about pregnancies would prompt her to reconsider. “I’m with ya, completely. I didn’t know the idea grossed you out, though.”

“It always has. It got worse after I got shot and I had doctors poking at and in my body all the time.” She pauses. “You told me raising Papyrus was… tiring. Is that your biggest issue? The energy it would take?”

He feels himself start to hunch reflexively. He tries to stand up straighter, but it feels weird so he lets his spine curl. “Pretty much. Between my dad, Paps, and the timelines, I… it took a lot outta me. I was worried ‘bout having anything left for you, let alone someone else.”

Her gaze softens. It doesn’t do that very often. She sits up and he takes the cue and sits next to her, letting her put an arm around his shoulders and draw him into her. They don’t cuddle frequently, neither of them is very touchy, but right now it makes him feel safe. Like he can relax, like he can slow his mind without worrying about crashing and not getting out of bed for days.

He turns, nuzzling into her hair. She sighs.

The moment is ruined when Alphys returns and almost jabs herself in the eye with her pen with how fast she slaps her hands to her cheeks. “OH MY GOD!! You _never_ snuggle!! You’re being so _adorable_!!”

Isla denies it instantly. “We’re not adorable. We’re immature and gross and annoying.”

“D-d-don’t stop on my account!” Alphys says, smirking. “I know you don’t get to be cute v-very often, so take your time!”

After she walks away, Sans says, “She’s putting a lot of faith in us not fucking on her couch.”

“I mean, we just had sex a few days ago, and she knows it. You don’t want to get back on it that quickly, do you?”

Between exerting his magic and the emotional toll seeing his father again slapped on him, he’s exhausted and he’s going to be that way for at least a week. He doesn’t want to, but just to mess with her, he says, “I could lay down and you could ride me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Last time we tried letting you do no work, you fell asleep, you lazy ass.”

“You’re never gonna let me live that one down, are ya?”

“Not a chance.”


	5. Contentment: an emotional state of being satisfied, happy, and at ease in one’s situation.

He clenches his hands so hard his claws dig into his palms. Raises a hand. Knocks.

He hears her moving. The door opens inward. “Asriel,” Isla says. If she is surprised, she doesn’t show it. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Are you busy?” he asks, and he does his best to sound casual, but he knows she sees the tension. She never misses it. She never misses anything.

“Not with anything urgent,” she replies. “Come in. Have a seat. I’ll call your dad and tell him you’re here.”

It didn’t take much convincing to get his mom to let him stay home from school. He was up before she was, which never happens. When she asked him if something was wrong, he told her he needed to see Isla. She knows what that means. Everyone knows what that means.

“You don’t need to call Dad,” he says. “He drove me here.”

“Okay,” she says simply. She grabs a notebook and sits on the small couch underneath the window. Usually, he sits next to her when they have sessions, so she can touch him. It’s weird that most human therapists don’t touch the people they’re trying to help. Sometimes a single hug can do so much more than hours of talking.

Asriel can’t imagine therapy without physical contact, but he still sits in the armchair. He doesn’t trust himself yet.

She watches him, then asks, “Is there something specific you wanted to work on?”

“Y-yes.” It comes out squeaky. He clears his throat. “I… I want to talk about Flowey.”

It’s not something he has ever said during a session. If Flowey came up, she was the one who brought him up, and there has never been a conversation about Flowey. It has always been Isla making observations, Isla reassuring him, Isla comforting him after a nightmare.

“What about Flowey?” she asks. Once again, if he surprised her, she doesn’t show it.

His grip tightens. The points of his claws poke into the upholstery of the chair. He flexes his fingers, trying to relax. “I just… wanted to tell you something.”

“Anything,” she says, tone calm and sincere.

He feels the preemptive dread of disappointing her, even though he knows there is very little he could do to disappoint her. He doubts she was disappointed by him _attacking_ her, even though she should have been.

If he thinks too hard, he’ll clam up and he won’t say it, so he just says it. If it comes out jumbled or confusing, Isla will help him organize it. “I… I know I’m n-not Flowey anymore, but I don’t feel like who I was before I was Flowey. I don’t feel like everyone is expecting me to be the person I was before I died but I feel like the least everyone is expecting is _not Flowey_ and I honestly feel more like Flowey than the Asriel I was before I died some days and – and I can’t. I can’t be Flowey again b-but I’m not Asriel anymore and I don’t know _who_ I’m supposed to be—”

He chokes and slaps a hand over his mouth, bowing his head, hot tears stinging his eyes. Really? It’s hardly been two minutes since he’s walked in here and he’s already crying.

Isla comes off the couch and crouches in front of his chair. She reaches up to touch his wrist and he takes the hint and drops his hands, gripping his knees.

“Come down here with me,” she says.

He almost doesn’t because he needs to be careful, he knows he’s more likely to lose control if he gets upset and he’s already upset and his dad is too far away to help Isla if he snaps and attacks her—

He gets down on his knees, like her. She takes his hands and he’s shaking, shaking, because it would be easy, wouldn’t it, to grab her by the throat and break her neck. That’s a thought _Flowey_ would have, but he’s having it now.

“This is the first time you have wanted to talk about Flowey.” Her voice is quiet, soft. “I’m proud of you for being willing to confront this issue. Have you been thinking about this for long?”

He nods. “S-since I started getting mad a lot.”

“I can imagine it must have been painful for you to internalize this.” She is not disappointed that he didn’t tell her about this thing that’s been in his head for years. She should be. “It sounds to me that you are frightened of some of the changes you have undergone since you regained a soul.”

“Exactly!” he bursts out, tugging his hands from her. “I have a soul! I sh-shouldn’t be thinking about how easy it would be to hurt you, or anyone else! I shouldn’t get so mad that I lash out and destroy something! I shouldn’t feel better when I think about killing people who hate monsters! I—”

She cuts him off by leaning forward and hugging him and that really makes him start sobbing. He can’t help but hug back. He doesn’t deserve this. This human has been nothing but kind to him, she has done nothing but sort through the crap in his head and fight off his demons, sometimes without his help – and how does he repay her? He creates more work for her. He thinks he’s Flowey and hurts her. He has done nothing good for her.

“Whatever you are thinking about yourself,” she says, “would you think the same if it were Frisk or Chara having these issues?”

It takes a few tries to get it out. “N-no, but they’ve b-been through so much more, people have actually h-hurt them, _I_ was one of those people—”

“Asriel.” She pulls back, hands still on his shoulders. He can barely see her face through the film of tears in his eyes. “Do you think that, next to someone who has been shot thirteen times, my pain should be disregarded because I’ve only been shot twelve times?”

“No! Why—”

“Then why do you seem to believe you shouldn’t be allowed to suffer because you weren’t abused?”

“People _hurt_ Frisk and Chara,” he repeats. “Th-that’s the only reason they ever hurt anybody else. Me, though… I’ve got no excuse.”

She holds him for a little while, letting him cry himself out. At this point, her presence alone can calm him, so it doesn’t last very long. His head ends up in her lap. She strokes his ears with gentle hands, and he’s almost asleep when she says, “I need to stand up. This is killing my knees.”

Asriel scrambles to his feet, mumbling, “Sorry, sorry.” He holds one hand out for her to take and the other arm goes around her waist. He hefts with too much force and her feet dangle for a moment before he sets her down. She wobbles, so he keeps a hold on her, gradually letting her take back her own weight.

That was definitely easier than he thought it was going to be. He likes getting bigger. The bigger her gets, the more things become easier for him. He can carry Frisk and Chara around without issue; Isla is smaller than Frisk so it should be no surprise she’s on that list, too.

He’s tempted to tell her to forget about it and try to shove it down again. He feels like he could. He could push it aside, for now. But what happens when he can’t anymore? Does he snap and attack somebody else? What if he actually _kills_ someone?

So he whispers, “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing is wrong with you,” she says calmly. “Your mind had to cope unbelievably overwhelming circumstances. If your behavior wasn’t deviant, I’d be worried. You developed certain habits as Flowey to deal with your soullessness. It isn’t a stretch to think those habits could resurface when you get stressed out.”

He doesn’t say anything, because as much as he tells himself that Flowey wasn’t him, he knows better. He’s always known.

But Isla notices. She notices everything. She moves, and he helps her leverage herself onto the couch. Funny that she once shielded him from death, when now he could pick her up one-handed and throw her over his shoulder.

“Asriel,” she says. “Whatever you’re thinking, talk to me.”

He doesn’t know how he ever denied it. “Flowey was me,” he says miserably. “I’m Flowey. Flowey will always be in me.”

She gestures. He hesitates, but sits next to her, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders and he brings his legs up onto the cushions and lets his head fall into her lap.

“Asriel, when you were Flowey,” there it is, she doesn’t deny it, not at all, “you were very, very psychologically ill. Would it help to think of it like that? That Flowey was an illness, and even though you’ve been cured, the illness left behind scars that you have to deal with?”

This gives him pause. He never thought about it like that. When he was Flowey, and right after he gained a soul, he was inclined to think of Flowey and Asriel as separate people. As time progressed, he began to realize the two weren’t as different as he’d like them to be, but he denied it as long as he could.

“You lived in a different reality.” Her hands are stroking his head again. “One without love, hope, or compassion. One in which consequences and promises meant less because death wasn’t permanent. One in which you were alone.”

He sniffs. Damn, he’s almost _fifteen_ , is he really going to start crying again?

“Not a single one of those things is true anymore,” Isla says firmly. “You, Frisk, and Chara all feel like your control over the timeline is gone. This is permanent. You are not alone. You are loved, and you are worthy of it. I understand it is a huge adjustment. Asking your mind to stay within your current reality at all times, even under severe stress, would be unfair, especially since your time as Flowey was so traumatizing for you. That’s _okay_. Everyone is going to help you. I am here to help you, and I am so, so glad you shared this with me.”

He keeps it together long enough to turn his face up so he can see her. “I think – that will make me feel better. To think of it like an illness, like you said. I, I – thank you. Th-thank you so m-much—”

Yeah. He’s going to start crying again.

But that is okay.

 

* * *

 

Sans has been cool with Chara for a long time. Honest. He understands why the kid feels the need to learn how to defend themself. He’d even say after all they’ve been through, they’re entitled to it.

He still gets a little… tense when they come over and Isla teaches them how to knife-fight. This has been ongoing for almost six months. Toriel told him Chara was begging her and Asgore to let them learn. They were hesitant, at first. Understandably – just looking at the kid’s arms would make anyone reluctant to put a knife in their hand, and that’s without all the crap Sans doesn’t actually remember.

They still have sessions with Isla three or four times a week. Isla doesn’t tell him everything, but she tells him more than she does with official patients. She has told Sans Chara has made significant progress in processing their past, organizing their present, and believing they have a viable future. That doesn’t mean they don’t have symptoms, because they do, a lot. Sometimes they still want to hurt themself. Sometimes they can’t let anyone touch them. Sometimes they come to Sans to talk or rant or cry which was something that took getting used to, but he supposes they did open up to him first.

He feels like it’s a failing on his part to see them with a knife in their hand and need to leave. But he _needs_ to leave. He manages to watch for a little while at the beginning of each practice. Undyne is here, too. Sans can’t discern why, unless it’s just her love of sparring and learning various fighting techniques.

“Right hand today, Chara,” Isla says.

Chara makes a face, but switches the knife from their left hand to their right. Is that better? Sans can’t tell.

“I’m goin’ for a walk,” he calls.

Isla and Chara simultaneously look at him, nod, and turn their attention back to each other. They’re alike, but… he hopes Chara doesn’t grow up to look or be exactly like his partner. That would be weird.

He needs to burn time, so no point in teleporting. He tugs his hood up against the October chill, stuffs his hands in his pockets, and walks. Maybe he drags his feet a little, but that’s alright. If he wears holes in his slippers Isla will buy him new ones.

He’s too lazy to talk to anyone at the moment, so maybe he teleports ahead occasionally to avoid people who might recognize him. He goes around Main Street rather than walking along it, and before long he reaches human suburbs. This… buffer zone of humans who are comfortable living alongside monsters. They are all that stands between their side of the city and the human urban center.

Sans knows most of them are indifferent. They don’t care what the monsters do, but they want the racists to knock off their law-breaking bullshit and settle down. There are some supporters here, too, but the supporters are spread thin: some here, some living as neighbors to monsters, and some on the other end of the city, taking it upon themselves to retaliate against the racists.

If somebody’s gotta do it, it’s better that it’s them. Monsters have tried to be very careful to not come off as threatening to any human. Sans knows many of them are scared, especially since some humans are openly hostile. People are paying more attention to souls and how to sense intent and malice. If something had to go through the human legal system, he honestly doesn’t believe it would be totally fair. He doesn’t believe it would try to be fair, either.

Monsters have some degree of sovereignty, though their royalty doesn’t have near the power they had Underground. If an incident were to involve two monsters, the human legal system wouldn’t bother getting involved. Throw a human in there, though…

He can’t pretend they all have bad intentions. Most of them become confused when they try to think about how monsters should integrate (Isla told him not to use the word assimilate. It means something different, not that he remembers the distinction). Most of them are aware that they cannot expect monsters to conform totally to existing human society.

Most of them don’t consider it their problem, either. Sans supposes it isn’t. Monsters have had a major impact locally, but that’s about it. It’s the reason why the national government refuses to do anything pertaining to monsters. They always claim they aren’t informed because they aren’t here. The people living with and around monsters are the people who are informed. They are the people whose lives are being impacted. Theirs are the opinions that should matter. It’s still irritating the local politicians are so scared of pissing off the racists they won’t grant full rights.

There’s another level of government in the middle… state-level. Why do humans need all these levels of governing, anyway? Their country’s massive, sure, but it’s not even the biggest or most populated so why divide it into all these little bits and give those little bits their own government?

Not that he really cares. He only has to care about the local government. The local politicians. The people who have the real power over them.

Sans pauses when he starts to see hints of his surroundings becoming more urban. He can walk this buffer zone of human suburbs without worrying, but if he goes into their side of the city, his safety will not be guaranteed.

He is about to turn around when he sees movement out of the corner of his eyesocket. A speck of white against the corner of a brick building. When he tries to follow it with his gaze, it moves.

He shuffles over to the building – an apartment building, and probably a nicer one due to its proximity to the suburb buffer – and follows along the wall to the back. The creature turns the corner.

He should go home. Isla and Chara are probably done.

He goes behind the building and finds it huddled behind a dumpster. It’s tiny. White belly and orange back and dirty all over. Bean was grey and had long fur and he was a pretty big cat. This thing is barely bigger than Bean’s head was.

Bean had yellow eyes. This one’s are blue. “Hey,” Sans says, sitting down on the pavement. There’s a parking lot behind the apartment building, but it’s empty down by this end. The dumpster will hide him from anyone going to their car. “Rough day, buddy?”

The kitten stares at him, wide-eyed and perfectly still. He closes his eyesockets. “S’alright. I know the feelin’. It’ll get better, if ya let somebody help ya.”

He opens his eyesockets when he feels a tiny nudge on one of his slippers. The kitten cautiously sniffs his feet. It looks up at Sans and begins to purr, the sound surprisingly loud from such a little animal.

Now that it’s closer to him, he notices it looks emaciated. “I don’t have a body, so I can’t be somebody,” he says. “But I guess I’ll have to do.”

 

* * *

 

When the sun set, I figured Sans went to Grillby’s and he wouldn’t be home until late. I’m proven wrong when he shows up just before eight.

I’m on the couch, reading a book. “Did you actually take a walk?”

“Uh, yeah,” he replies. “Brought a visitor home.”

Puzzled, I look up. He’s holding the hem of his shirt away from himself, something small cradled in it.

I set my book aside and walk over to him. Curled in his shirt is a little orange and white kitten. Probably not even two months old, if size is anything to go by.

I have a weak spot for cats. I reach out and scratch it behind the ears and it begins to purr. I trace my hand along it’s body, only to clearly feel its spine and ribs. “It’s starving. Where’d you find it?”

“On my walk. Near the human side of the city.”

I lift the little animal up and begin parting its fur in places. It doesn’t take long to find one. “It has fleas. It needs a bath. Go throw every fabric on you that touched it in the wash. Hot water.”

He goes and I take the kitten into the kitchen, holding it away from me. I stop up the sink and turn it on. Soap today. I’ll start using vinegar solutions tomorrow.

“Sorry, kitty,” I say, dunking it in the sink. “Sans!” I yell. “Bring my tweezers down when you’re done! And some towels!”

The poor thing cries. Bean cried too, when I bathed him as a kitten. He learnt to tolerate it as an adult. He still hated it, he’d sit there and glare at me, but he let me do it.

Sans shows up in one of my Stanford T-shirts. “I get the towels, but why’d you want these?” he asks, holding up the tweezers.

“I’ll show you,” I reply. After a quick scrub and rinse, I wrap up the kitten in a towel so only its head is exposed. I begin picking fleas off its face and around its ears and killing them. “Fleas tend to run for the head when an animal gets wet. We need to keep it off the carpets. Isolate it until we can be sure it’s clean.”

“We keepin’ it?”

“You knew as soon as I saw it we’d be keeping it.”

“Paps is gonna be so excited.”

I kill eleven fleas in total. I rub the kitten down, checking it as I go. “It’s male,” I say. I open his mouth. “And… he’s got adult teeth. Maybe he’s older than I thought.”

“What are we gonna name him?”

I glance at him. He grins. “How about Shakes-purr?”

I roll my eyes. “Sans.”

“Santa Claws? Catpernicus? Oedipuss?”

“Sans.”

“Oh! Picatso. Please?”

“Sure. But we’re calling him Pablo.”

 

* * *

 

The next day, the vet tells us Picatso is about four months old, weighs two-thirds of what he should weigh, and has fleas and ear mites. His bloodwork looks good. Last night he took wet food and water without issue. I got out Bean’s old litterbox and he used it.

Papyrus scolds me for letting Sans name the cat, but is satisfied with my idea of nicknaming him Pablo. He is otherwise overjoyed. Picatso will remain in the bathroom and will be receiving frequent baths until the fleas are gone. The vet gave me a solution to use in his ears for the ear mites.

October crawls into November. Alphys contacted Spencer and a few other people at the hospital to assist with the interracial observational study. She’s the one who meets us at the lab when I’m ovulating. She scans me first, to confirm it, then she leads us to a room that looks like it belongs in a mediocre hotel. I’m just glad she knew better than to expect participants to fuck on hospital gurneys or examination tables.

Alphys puts her tablet in front of her face so she can’t see us. “Uh… the human doctors have advised w-we start by having couples do it in the missionary position, so… a-a-anyway, there’s various l-lubricants on the table n-next to the bed. Right after…” she coughs, and hiding behind the tablet or not, I know she’s blushing, “right after y-you’re done, Sans – I g-g-guess female orgasm is helpful but not necessary to achieve pregnancy in humans?? Who w-would’ve known… OKAY so Sans, after y-you, uh, finish, h-hit that buzzer on the t-t-table… that will help us time it correctly. Bye!!!”

She runs out of the room. I sit down on the edge of the bed. “I’ve been trying to get in the mood since we got here and I’m failing,” I admit.

“That we’re being timed is a major mood killer,” Sans says. “Think we could pull out?”

When I look at him, I realize he doesn’t know what he said. I smirk. “Pulling out would destroy the point of the study, don’t you think?”

“What do you – oh.” He grins. “I love you.”

“Should we see if oral sex gets us in the mood?”

“Worth a shot.”

The next twenty minutes is fun, but after that it’s kind of unfun. I’m allowed to wipe myself off, but I’m discouraged from making an effort to push anything out of me. I’m scanned under a large, CT-like machine and then come the pelvic and transvaginal exams.

Spencer does them. He’s seen me naked before, which was also in a medical setting. I’ve been used to doctors sticking their fingers and technology into my orifices for eighteen years. It’s okay right up until he pushes the probe into me and a glob of undoubtedly translucent blue fluid slips out of me and rolls down my right buttcheek. I make a face. Sans, who elected to stay in the room with me, goes bright blue.

“Semen’s part of the program, Isla,” Spencer says. The probe presses against my cervix. “Relax and hold still.”

“Can you wipe that off my butt?”

Sans groans, embarrassed. “You’re thirty-one, you can wipe your own butt when I’m done,” Spencer deadpans. “I have a baby at home. Hers and mine are the only butts I need to wipe.”

 

* * *

 

I go back to the lab for the same exams every day until I get my period. It’s a relief to know that, even though this has been happening, it really does look like I can’t get pregnant. I’m not looking forward to doing this again, but they will probably want more data. That’s fine. We typically have sex like once a month, anyway, and they’re not asking for more than that.

Picatso doubles in size and is flea-free in a matter of weeks. His ear mite medication requires doses over a period of months, but during his last appointment the vet didn’t see any. He’s healthy and I’m starting to train him. It’s kind of weird, because he’s not Bean, but Bean was a practical cat. He wouldn’t want his food dishes or his litter box to go to – ha – waste.

Unlike Bean, Picatso is very playful, which means when Papyrus isn’t spoiling him rotten the kids are often over here playing with him. They can’t entertain him all the time, though.

He usually sleeps downstairs, or with Papyrus, but he sneaks into our room one night and wakes up Sans several times by crawling all over the bed, meowing at us and generally being a pain in the ass.

“He needs friends,” Sans grumbles the next day, which is how we end up going to a shelter and coming home with two more kittens. Girls, this time, from the same litter.

They’re a month younger than Picatso, but they’re almost as big as he is. Papyrus is overjoyed to see them. He accusingly asks Sans what he’s named them.

Sans suggests shockingly normal names. Claudia for the all-black kitten and Jennifer for the tortoiseshell. Papyrus is on board immediately, so I shrug and agree.

Sans takes them to the vet the morning after we get them because he doesn’t need to be at the college until that afternoon and I’m at work. They are pronounced perfectly healthy, which is good.

I don’t like declawing, so I get out Bean’s claw clippers and teach Sans how to use them (Papyrus’s hands are too big to use them gracefully). Next on the list is getting the kittens spayed and neutered, but that won’t happen for a while yet. Everyone loves the new additions to our weird little family, but they all liked Bean, so it’s no surprise. Undyne implies Sans and I are adopting cats in lieu of having kids, which is… probably accurate. We’re cat-parents now. They entertain themselves well enough when we’re not home, so we feel comfortable leaving them to go over to Toriel’s for dinner.

Asriel has been doing better since his impromptu visit to my office. How Flowey fits into his identity is something I have been wanting to address for years, but he never engaged when I talked about Flowey. It was a relief to finally have his input on how he feels about it.

I’m getting myself another piece of pie when I realize it. I turn to the table. “Sans,” I call. “Can you come here for a minute?”

He always comes when I call. He has done that from the beginning. When he reaches me I say, “You didn’t name our kittens Claudia and Jennifer. You named them _Claw_ dia and Jenni _fur_.”

His perpetual grin widens. “Took ya long enough.”

“We can’t tell Papyrus. Ever.”

“You’re not kitten around.”

“I bet you’re really pleased with yourself.”

“I am. It was purrfect.”

I’m facing him and our family is behind him, in the background, eating and talking. “You know,” I say casually, “I was dicking around online yesterday and I found a word for us to call ourselves.”

He blinks. “We don’t need a word, though.”

“I know, but hear me out. It’s called alterous. It means neither completely platonic nor romantic. It puts everyone on a spectrum, rather than in a binary, which is more accurate, anyway. Alterous lets us be what we want and what we are, it just gives us an easy way to describe us.” I’m smiling and I didn’t realize it until now. “That’s us.”

Something about his expression softens. “That’s us,” he repeats.

We almost never kiss in front of people, even our family, but then we are. It’s barely three seconds before Undyne yells, “Get a room!!” and Frisk wolf-whistles at us and Chara says, “Gross,” ever so eloquently.

We pull apart and glance at the people giggling at us. I give them a middle finger with one hand, pull Sans back to me with the other, and listen as the giggling erupts into laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, kudosing, commenting, subscribing, bookmarking, everything. I have oodles of fun here and you guys are a big part of why. If you want to screech at me in the comments I'll get around to screeching back.


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